Virtual file server storage

[JordanT91]

I hope this is the right section

 

I'm in the process of setting up brand new virtual servers to eventually replace the mess that we have at the moment.

 

I have set up two arrays (both RAID 10), one has four 15K SAS drives and the other has four SATA drives (the server was mistakenly shipped with SATA drives and I got to keep them when the SAS drives turned up).

I have Windows Server 2012 R2 with Hyper-V installed on the box. The SAS array is partitioned with a drive for the OS and a drive for the VMs. This is where I'm getting confused. I want to use the SATA array purely for the file server's storage but I'd like the actual VM to be stored with the rest of the VMs on the SAS array.

 

What's the best way to accomplish this? There's probably a dead simple solution but I've never had to do this before and my head is already in weekend mode.

 

Edit: I should mention the host isn't on the domain or even networked to the VMs.

Edited February 6, 2015 by JordanT91

[3s-gtech]

I have similar on my Hyper-V VM hosts. I have the second, slower disk array in RAID 10. This is then seen in the virtual host OS as a drive, and I create the storage volumes for the VMs as virtual disks in here.

[tmcd35]

Create the file storage VM in the usual way with its C: drive VHD hosted on the SAS volume, as with all the other VMs. For the file storage drive, format and partition the SATA array as need then add it as a Physical drive to the file server VM in its VM settings.

 

Personally, given the setup, I'd have been tempted to make the virtual host server a domain member and have it double up as the file server rather than run the file server in a VM.