New Hyper-V Install

oddjob62

oddjob62

oddjob62

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Currently installing a Hyper-V cluster.

Hardware:
3x Dell PE R910 with
4x 2.0gig Xeons
64G RAM

Running: Windows Server 2008 R2 Datacenter (Server Core)

Storage: 2 sets of MD3000i + MD1000i (15k 450G drives)

First time really playing with Hyper-V or Server Core.

Just finished setting up the basic cluster which i will be using for testing over the next week. 3 Nodes. iSCSI back end with MPIO.

Having previously set up a very similar spec ESX cluster, i must say that this was a LOT more work. Server Core takes a bit of getting used to and the Dell + MS documentation for setting up the iSCSI part was pretty poor.

But now i have a couple of VMs running, and it's time to start playing with them. We have the full MS SC suite so i have a lot of configuring to do, as well as testing failover, DR, etc.

Will keep this thread updated if anyone is interested.
 
Yeah, compared to vmware it is rather a lot of work to get it up and running, particularly true of some of SC stuff in comparison to the vmware alternatives...
 
I could never get on with Core, just took so long figuring out how to do stuff that would take 2 clicks with a GUI. Hence we are using the full version for our hyper-v clusters.

I've been playing with the thing for a while now, but wont being using in production until we get commvault backup sorted out, as currently I dont have any easy way of backing up VHDs that are sitting on the CSV disks.
 
Lanz said:
I could never get on with Core, just took so long figuring out how to do stuff that would take 2 clicks with a GUI. Hence we are using the full version for our hyper-v clusters.
Click to expand...

Only tricky bit was setting up the iSCSI MPIO. But it seems to be working well now.

Lanz said:
I've been playing with the thing for a while now, but wont being using in production until we get commvault backup sorted out, as currently I dont have any easy way of backing up VHDs that are sitting on the CSV disks.
Click to expand...

Well we are using DPM 2010, and to be fair, DPM does have a lot of faults, but 2010 is a BIG improvement over 2007. And so far seems to work with Hyper-V and CSVs. In fact i just deleted a test SQL server on HV and going to try to restore it.

Earlier i V2V migrated a test server from VMWare to HV using SCVMM. Went through smoothly. Only thing i need to remember is to uninstall the tools first, as uninstalling after seems to be a right pain.
 
Stelly said:
Use Hyper-V core for all our virtualized environments, I'm happy with the performance

Stelly
Click to expand...

Good to hear thanks.

Yeah from what i've read the raw performance is pretty much on par with VMW, it's just a bit more fiddly and not quite as many features (although the extra memory features coming in SP1 will make a big difference)
 
Well DPM restores of full VMs work nicely. A few gotchas when trying to do a scenario that tbh would barely happen, but just did a backup of a VM, and restored it to a different Hyper-V server. A small 10gig server was up and running in about 3 minutes.

Tomorrow i'm doing more iSCSI performance testing and tweeking and might doing some breaktesting (unplugging some of the cables, switching off a switch) and see how it handles it.

We will have 2 MD3000i SANs with dual raid card. Each raid has 2 nics on 2 different networks and a dedicated switch for each network. Gig thoughout but no Jumbo frames yet (Want to test with and without).
 
Just to add my 10cents - there is no performance benefit with running Hyper-V under Server Core. Either installation is uses the same type 1 hyper visor.

The major benefit you get running a Core installation is there are far fewer windows updates that need to be applied, and a smaller memory footprint, which let's you allocate more to your VMs.
 
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