Failover Cluster running Hyper V Server?

james73 · 14 May 2019 at 20:48

Ok. I'm a bit of a noob to Server virtualisation. I'd like a set-up as shown below - two physically identical boxes, running Hyper V Server, with a SAN storage attached.

My question is, can I run my entire network (less than 20 users) on a set-up like this? I'd be looking at around 4, 5 maybe 6 virtual servers on the Cluster boxes. It'd be one Domain Controller (running AD, File Server, etc) and the other servers smaller tasks (email server; back-up schedule; whatever else; etc).

We've not a big network but we generate a lot of data, hence the SAN.

...

All suggestions welcome!

james73 · 15 May 2019 at 17:50

No. We have an old Equallogic NAS but the boss wants it replaced.

james73 · 17 May 2019 at 20:46

TheOracle said:
Look at the compellent range (sc4000?), it offers a lot of good features. If you have a lot of data, might be worthwhile.

Just moved from equalogic to compellent myself, it's much, much better! and a lot less faffing about from the windows side.

Is the Compellent SAS drives or SATA? I think (off the top of my head) one of the reasons the boss wanted shot of the old Equalogic SAN was the cost of the drives.

Any opinions on a Synology Rackstation NAS?

james73 · 17 May 2019 at 21:18

TheOracle said:
No it's sas and yeah they were expensive

Roughly, what sort of cost for what sort of capacity?

james73 · 20 May 2019 at 19:35

Trig said:
IP Address Conflict Detected..

Other than that, looks ok

james73 · 21 May 2019 at 21:32

It's not just how much data we create, it's about how long we have to hold it and make it available.

james73 · 23 May 2019 at 18:54

Si. said:
You have a single point of failure with the switch configuration. Maybe consider running dual NIC connections and either stacking the switches (Depending on what switches they are) or keeping them standalone, but having them both on a central backbone. This will greatly increase your resilience to the Clients and SAN at no extra hardware cost. Just configure VLANS for the SAN connections to keep them away from any production traffic. With a setup your size sharing switch infrastructure won't be an issue.

If you're looking for long term backup storage consider NL-SAS disks (Nearline) rather than the 7k SAS drives. There not as fast, but there a LOT cheaper and ideal for archive storage.

Good suggestion. We've plenty of switches right now so we should be able to reuse what we have. A separate switch for each Server connecting to the SAN/NAS, yes? Also, do you mean run two cables to each switch each with it's own IP address to connect to the SAS/NAS? Would that not show (in the Servers) twice as much SAS/NAS space as really exists? :confused:

On the subject of software, we have at least 3 copies of Server 2012 and at least 4 copies of Server 2008 R2. Can we use these at no additional cost given they all have valid licences?

james73 · 27 May 2019 at 19:44

Thanks. I reckon a Server 2008 R2 VM or two should be fine if we're using it to simply run a scheduled backup via Robocopy or something like that. Plus, we have a Server 2000 box running some sort of ancient software that's tied to that particular server OS due to it's licence. Or so I've been told. Also, I assume the 2 VMs per licence means we could install a Windows 10 VM i.e. it's not limited to a server OS?

^Just googled that last bit. No, you can't.