A cluster within a cluster! Hyper-V query

[Showboat]

Hi, we currently have 14 physical servers in a cluster configuration hosting a couple of hundred VM's using hyper-v.

Now in my test environment (within that cluster) i was looking to play around and make another cluster, but i'm not sure it's possible.

I have two vm's, and need to create shared storage, we only use vhd's so no pass-through disks.
Am i right in thinking that i can only present the vhd to one vm? If i can i can't really have true shared storage, i know i can use iscsi to share it out to multiple hosts, but if the vm hosting the storage goes down then the entire cluster goes down, which defeats the purpose of a cluster!

Comments / thoughts please!

 

[Skidilliplop]

No Hyper-v won't let you do that i don't think. If it does it'd be flakey. VMWare does in version 5 with some limitations.

Assuming for a moment you do get it working:
The storage VM represents a SAN, IRL if a SAN goes down, so does your cluster. That's why you plough money into them to make them resilient.
One way you could do it is have two storage VMs both presenting iSCSI drives to the Virtual cluster. Create duplicate LUNs and use windows mirroring to effectively RAID1 the two storage VMs. That'd keep both in synch and provide resiliency to losing a storage VM.

Have a try, none of this info comes with any warranty cos I'm a VMware boff, my Hyper-V experience is very limited. But in theory it all looks fine

 

[kerrgreg]

Could be alittle haxz but you might be able to do it this way:

Run a ESXI server on your H-V and then run a new hyper V cluster in the Esxi, Im sure you can run esxi as a virtual but I think you get a 64/32bit system issue, at one point you can no longer run 64bit OS's as you would expect really. sadly i cant remember any more about it.