Fresh and New Hyper-V Setup - Path of Least Resistance?

[JRA]

Morning all,

 

Well the time has come to ditch KVM (Linux virtualisation) for something that a normal human being can actually support. Given that I'm leaving a world of cryptic error messages and indecipherable issues, I'm looking for the least headaches possible in a Microsoft-based setup.

 

My SAN (which I'd like to continue using) is a Synology NAS appliance, serves iSCSI LUNS, which I assume I can just create new VMs for in Hyper-V which will 'just work' when they boot, that right? If not, what new SAN OS should I get? I have a slightly older storage server I can use.

 

I'll also be going for four heads to run the VMs. I intend to multipath them back to the SAN through two switches, does this work in Hyper-V?

 

If you were setting this up anew today, what would be the absolute least hassle to get the most reliable solution?

 

Thanks much everyone!

[Jcx500]

Hyper v isn't much hassle at all its nice and simple, id recommend installing it as a role on Windows Server rather than using Hyper v server its a lot easier to manage that way in my opinion,

[JRA]

Hyper v isn't much hassle at all its nice and simple, id recommend installing it as a role on Windows Server rather than using Hyper v server its a lot easier to manage that way in my opinion,

Thanks for that! I'll start installing the first head today.

 

As for SAN and multipathing to it, what would anyone recommend? Is there even a SAN OS from Microsoft? If so, can I connect to it via two routes? As in, if I had five NICs on a head, two are teamed and go through switch 1, the other two are teamed and go through switch 2, both switches connect to the SAN.

 

That sound right?

 

Thanks!

[Davit2005]

Storage Spaces. As far as Multi-pathing personally I'd just use NIC teaming with failover using 10Gb links with 2 seperate switches if possible or chassis with redundant PSUs. I've more of an idea with MultiPathing on VMWare with iSCSI not to sure how Hyper-V would deal with Multi-Pathing to storage.

[JRA]

Storage Spaces. As far as Multi-pathing personally I'd just use NIC teaming with failover using 10Gb links with 2 seperate switches if possible or chassis with redundant PSUs. I've more of an idea with MultiPathing on VMWare with iSCSI not to sure how Hyper-V would deal with Multi-Pathing to storage.

Would it also be sane to have, say, 8x fiber nics in the SAN, 2x in each head and connect directly?

 

Cheers much btw.

[Jcx500]

Sounds Like a good plan

[JRA]

Hi again everyone - well I knocked up the attached picture. Does this look sane so far?

 

 

 

Bonds are on the SAN (the big thing at the bottom, sorry didn't label this great) and the rest colour coded. This should allow me to add up to four heads to the SAN in this configuration. Is this getting sensible or madness?

 

Next thing I need is how to set up a SAN from scratch. Been googling that but it's surprisingly difficult to get answers that 'speak' to me!

 

Thanks everyone!

[JRA]

...Although I *just* found out we no longer need SANs and nearly fell out my chair! I'm looking into this...

[MS2011]

Hi again everyone - well I knocked up the attached picture. Does this look sane so far?

 

 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]51102[/ATTACH]

 

Bonds are on the SAN (the big thing at the bottom, sorry didn't label this great) and the rest colour coded. This should allow me to add up to four heads to the SAN in this configuration. Is this getting sensible or madness?

 

Next thing I need is how to set up a SAN from scratch. Been googling that but it's surprisingly difficult to get answers that 'speak' to me!

 

Thanks everyone!

 

Why can’t you add some ssd ( local storage )

[JRA]

Why can’t you add some ssd ( local storage )

 

I think I am going that way now tbh; couple of BEASTLY heads in a failover. Well, now I've found out people do that nowadays anyway!

[Jcx500]

My Hyper v host is all local storage, works great

[JRA]

Hi all - just getting back to this. I might be asking a very obvious question but maybe not. I hope not...

 

Anyway, is it possible to have a setup where, say, two heads run a bunch of VMs and share storage without a SAN. And then in this scenario one of the heads breaks (the server itself catches light let's say) and the other server just takes over the running of the VMs perfectly and seamlessly until a new head is built?

 

Is that something that can be done or can't be done?

 

Thanks everybody again!

[mikkydoos]

Look at Starwinds

[DrCheese]

Why can’t you add some ssd ( local storage )

 

Finding Enterprise SSD prices over 480GB crazy overpriced, close to £1k for some 960gb's from Dell :X