jbutlin Posted February 22, 2016 Posted February 22, 2016 Hi folks, I'm relatively new to the world of virtualisation although I know a few bits of maintenance. I've discovered that our three hyper-v servers are almost completely filling the volume up, with only a few MB to spare! I'm purchasing some more hot-swappable hard drives, but I have a few questions about hosting the VMs. Currently the 3 VMs are hosted on our server's D: drive which is a basic volume. Should I - add another hard drive, configure it as a basic volume and move one of the VMS to it? Or - configure D: and the new hard drive as a dynamic volume and add capacity that way? Does it even matter? Sorry for the stupid questions, and thanks in advance for any advice.
jamesfed Posted February 22, 2016 Posted February 22, 2016 What kind of hardware are the Hyper-V hosts running on? In an ideal world that D drive would be hosted on a RAID array - you should simply need to add an aditional drive to the RAID array and then expand the size of the drive in Disk Management. Also worth checking if there are a load of snapshots on your VMs; if so (and if you can) merge all the snapshots together to recover the disk space (on earlier versions of Hyper-V the VM will need to be turned off to do this).
jbutlin Posted February 22, 2016 Author Posted February 22, 2016 Thanks for your reply jamesfed. The physical server is an HP ProLiant ML350P Gen8 running Server 2012 Standard. I didn't set up the server - was hoping to add two more drives and then convert to RAID array... The D: drive is 931 GB I've removed all the snapshots listed in the Hyper-V Management console, but I notice when browsing the Hyper-V Hard Disks folder, although there are plenty of AVHD files still. Hyper V Manager console is version 6.2.9200 I hope that helps - and thanks again for your reply!
jamesfed Posted February 22, 2016 Posted February 22, 2016 Just to confirm your Hyper-V Management Console for the VMs is looking like Hyper-V Live Merge Snapshot Feature in Windows Server 2012 – Mike F Robbins now? In particular the final image where the Hard Drive has the .vhdx extension? Sounds like a single 1TB drive in there - just to confirm you are sure there is no RAID already setup?
jbutlin Posted February 22, 2016 Author Posted February 22, 2016 Yes, my console looks just like that. And there is definitely no RAID configured in Windows, although there may be RAID set up in HP iLo (although I've never had the credentials for that).
jamesfed Posted February 22, 2016 Posted February 22, 2016 Cool Some more investigation as to why those AVHD files around sticking around is warranted though. To me its sounding like a backup/copy of your VMs and a compleate wipe/reinstall of the server would be a worthy venture That way you can get the iLO admin password reset and get the RAID array setup anew instead of trying to smash something in from the side. 1
PotNoodleTech Posted February 23, 2016 Posted February 23, 2016 You need to check if it is definitely a single disk or some kind of raid array - if you go into Device Manager and Drill down into Disk Drives - it will tell you - a normal disk will show up with the make and model e.g. "ATA WDC WD12EARS Scsi Disk Device" A raid disk will show up as something totally different generally without a make, model, etc.
jbutlin Posted February 23, 2016 Author Posted February 23, 2016 Thanks a lot, I will have to weigh up my options! Sounds like a holiday job. Cheers
supawat1 Posted February 23, 2016 Posted February 23, 2016 Just to add, you need to consider about licensing limitation on WS 2012 Standard edition, because it can only give you 2 VOSEs. Virtualisation Licensing for WS2012 & WS2012 R2 | Aidan Finn, IT Pro 1
Asad_Symitry Posted March 2, 2016 Posted March 2, 2016 Is there any reason why you've not gown down the route of a SAN and having your VM's and data all on there?
SHimmer45 Posted March 2, 2016 Posted March 2, 2016 i expect cost is an issue or not having a large enough current workload to justify a SAN.
Asad_Symitry Posted March 2, 2016 Posted March 2, 2016 True, we're seeing a lot of people go down the hyperconverged route.
jbutlin Posted March 24, 2016 Author Posted March 24, 2016 Yes, our junior school wouldn't want to pay out for something like a SAN, and as Shimmer45 rightly said, there's not a large enough workload to justify it.
PotNoodleTech Posted March 24, 2016 Posted March 24, 2016 A SAN would be totally overkill for a junior school. Two fairly modest Hyper-V servers with replication turned on is all you need and that would be darn reliable.
smithson83 Posted March 24, 2016 Posted March 24, 2016 A SAN would be totally overkill for a junior school. Two fairly modest Hyper-V servers with replication turned on is all you need and that would be darn reliable. I 2nd this, its what we do. Half VM's on one, replicating to the other, and vice versa. Backing up to a NAS, and a set of external drives for offsite. 1
PotNoodleTech Posted March 24, 2016 Posted March 24, 2016 Yes it's the perfect budget setup - can get away with single CPU servers say 32GB RAM. Just need to slap some hard drives in the servers and hey presto!
SHimmer45 Posted March 24, 2016 Posted March 24, 2016 A SAN would be totally overkill for a junior school. Two fairly modest Hyper-V servers with replication turned on is all you need and that would be darn reliable. @AButters id agree with this. once you do the initial replication the amount of data that would need to be replicated for a small junior school isnt going to be huge
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