Different organizations have different requirements and
different budgets for their IT operations, and Windows Server 2012
provides a wide range of physical storage options for Hyper-V hosts.
Choosing the storage solution that meets your needs and cost
parameters is an important part of the host-deployment planning
process.
The following types of physical storage can be used by Hyper-V
hosts for storing virtual machine configuration files and
disks:
-
Direct Attached Storage
(DAS) With DAS solutions, the storage is directly
attached to the management operating system. Hyper-V supports
the following DAS technologies:
-
Serial Advanced Technology Attachment (SATA) -
external SATA (eSATA) -
Small Computer System Interface (SCSI) -
Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) -
Parallel Advanced Technology Attachment (PATA) -
Universal Serial Bus (USB) -
FireWire
-
Storage area network (SAN)
With SAN solutions, the storage is provided by a set of
interconnected devices that are connected to a common
communication and data-transfer infrastructure, commonly known
as the storage fabric. Hyper-V supports the
following types of storage fabrics: -
Scale-Out File Servers New
features of the Server Message Block (SMB) 3.0 protocol now
allow file servers running Windows Server 2012 to provide
continuously available and scalable storage for CSVs. This
allows you to use a file share on a Windows Server 2012 file
server to provide storage for Hyper-V host clusters.
Note
NAS and Hyper-V
Network-attached storage (NAS) is not supported for Hyper-V
hosts.
Deciding whether to use SAN or DAS as your host storage
solution depends on a number of different factors. For example, some
of the advantages of the SAN approach include
-
SAN allows multiple servers access to a pool of storage.
This means SAN provides flexibility by allowing any server to
access any storage unit in the SAN array. -
Because SAN is a centralized storage solution, it is
easier to manage than DAS. This might be an important
consideration if you will be deploying many Hyper-V
hosts. -
SAN has a more scalable architecture than the DAS
approach.
The disadvantages of the SAN approach, however, include the
following:
-
SANs are usually more costly than DAS solutions, and
depending on your business priorities this factor might weigh
heavily in your decision. -
DAS solutions typically have lower latency than SANs. So
if application I/O or service latency is a priority, DAS might
be the route to take.
Once you deploy your Hyper-V hosts, you need to be able to
manage them efficiently. Choosing the right management solution,
therefore, is a key aspect of the host-deployment process.
Hyper-V includes two in-box tools for configuring and managing
host machines:
-
Hyper-V Manager This
Microsoft Management Console (MMC) snap-in has been enhanced
with new functionality in Windows Server 2012, but it basically
provides the same level of host-management capability as in
previous versions of Windows Server. You can use this tool to
manage any number of host machines, but as the number of managed
hosts increases the amount of work to manage them scales
accordingly. -
Windows PowerShell Hyper-V
module Windows Server 2012 includes over a hundred new Windows
PowerShell cmdlets that can be used to manage both Hyper-V hosts
and virtual machines running on these hosts. Because of its
flexibility and support for automation, Windows PowerShell is
the preferred in-box tool for managing Hyper-V hosts and virtual
machines in large environments such as datacenters and
cloud-computing environments.
Note
Managing Hyper-V on different Windows Server
versions
You can use the Hyper-V Manager snap-in to manage
Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V hosts from either a Server With A
GUI or Server Minimal Server Interface installation of Windows
Server 2012 that has the Hyper-V management tools installed,
or from a Windows 8 administrator workstation that has the
Remote Server Administration Tools (RSAT) for Windows 8
installed. However, you cannot manage Hyper-V hosts running
earlier versions of Windows Server using these tools. Such
hosts must be managed using an earlier version of Hyper-V
Manager. This means that you might need multiple sets of
management tools to manage a mixed environment that has
Hyper-V hosts running different Windows Server versions. The
alternative is to use System Center 2012 Virtual Machine
Manager SP1, which allows you to manage all versions of
Hyper-V hosts.
You can use Windows PowerShell to manage hosts and virtual
machines using one-off commands issued from the Windows
PowerShell console, by using Windows PowerShell scripts, and by
using the following two new capabilities included in Windows
PowerShell 3.0:
-
Windows PowerShell
workflows These allow you to create sequences of
multicomputer management activities that are long-running,
repeatable, frequent, parallelizable, interruptible,
stoppable, and restartable. Windows PowerShell workflows can
be suspended and resumed after a network outage, machine
restart, or power loss. Windows PowerShell workflows are
also portable and can be exported and imported as XAML
files. -
Windows PowerShell scheduled
jobs Windows PowerShell 3.0 now allows you to
schedule Windows PowerShell background jobs and manage them
in Windows PowerShell and in Task Scheduler. Windows
PowerShell scheduled jobs run asynchronously in the
background. You can create, edit, manage, disable, and
re-enable them; create scheduled job triggers; and set
scheduled job options by using Windows PowerShell
cmdlets.
In addition to using the preceding in-box tools for managing
Hyper-V hosts and virtual machines that are included in Windows
Server 2012, organizations that need to deploy and manage large
numbers of hosts or virtual machines can benefit from the following
products from Microsoft’s System Center platform:
-
System Center Virtual Machine
Manager Allows you to configure and deploy virtual
machines and centrally manage your physical and virtual
infrastructure from one console -
System Center Configuration
Manager Allows you to assess, deploy, and update
servers, client computers, and devices across physical, virtual,
distributed, and mobile environments
Note
System Center and Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V
System Center 2012 Service Pack 1 is required for managing
Hyper-V hosts running Windows Server 2012.
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