OS and Software > No, I Will Not Fix Your #@$!! Computer > New equipment part 2 - need some VM assistance

New equipment part 2 - need some VM assistance

Re: New equipment part 2 - need some ESXi assistance

What about Microsoft's Hyper-V?

Any way of doing it with this?

Hyper-V you'd still have to do a pass-through disk to the local storage directly, Hyper-V has a 2TB VHD limit as well. I've not tested nor tried but it does at least support pass-through to local storage.

I don't know if it has to be separate physical disks or if just another drive/volume will work.
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reply to exocet_cm

Re: New equipment part 2 - need some VM assistance

reply to exocet_cm
What you could do is make multiple datastores

then give the VM multiple VMDKs, then in the windows OS (ie the VM) make it a dynamic disk and make it span multiple disks.

BTW I'd give the VM 1 VMDK for the OS, then several others for the storage and initialize the others as GPT not as MBR.

And on ESXi5 you could set the VM to use a EFI boot system thus allowing the OS VMDK to also be GPT (i've been doing that lately) (BTW from what I've read ESXi5 will format the datastore as GPT if its a fresh install)

btw someone I work with once did the logical drive dynamic spaning thing with 5x MSA30's (the HP controler had a 2TB limit but by spaning and adding some mirroring (for redundancy) he got some fairly large drives seen by windows.

reply to exocet_cm
Alright, I blew away the ESXi install. Installed Server 2008 R2 ENT and then installed Hyper-V.

The main non-VM OS is configured for file storage (our client machines can see the shared drive).

I created a VM for our various applications without issue. This deployment is EXACTLY what I was looking for. Main OS - file storage, VM OS running other applications.
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reply to exocet_cm
You crerate the LUN as large as the array lets you. You then create 1.9TB VMDKs and present them to the VM. From Windows, you can create spanned disks.

The actual limit for VMDK is 2TB-512B. Easier to go with 1.9TB.

reply to exocet_cm
You can do it with XenServer. It's not an official way of doing it, but users who have done it report very good success.

Look at Scott's reply: »forums.citrix.com/thread.jspa?th···D=262258

reply to exocet_cm
This is what I ended up doing with my personal server at home. I reconfigured it with 5 1TB disks in RAID 5 and ESXi 4.1 wouldn't have supported that. I could upgrade to ESXi 5 but my RAID controller (3ware 9550) required an OEM boot file to make it work and I haven't seen one for 5.0 yet.

Rather than deal with the issue of multiple virtual disks for my file server, I instead opted for Server 2008 R2 as the host with Hyper-V and use the host OS for file server duties and run VMs for Exchange, DC, etc. I should note I did have to upgrade the firmware on the controller for anyone attempting this with the same card I used. Of course a newer card wouldn't have this issue.

Only issue with that is windows updates.
you'll have to shut down all the windows Vm's to do some updates (and you know microsoft with their monthly (and more) updates.)

with VMware the updates are less offten (due to not having so many security patches being needed.)

BTW you might consider one of the VM's being a WSUS server.

IMO every network should have the following
DC, Fileserver, WSUS, Printserver.

However joining a fileserver to a domain for which the DC is a VM ontop of said fileserver would be problematic (or at least tricky)

I can attest to that. When I first started using virtual machines it was full Server 2008 install with Hyper-V. The hosts were not doing anything but they were joined to the domain. There were two DCs, one in each host. It got to where after an extended power outage that shut everything down, it was easier to shut it all back down manually and bring things up myself than let Hyper-V try and boot ALL the VMs at once (it didn't/doesn't have the ordered boot like ESXi does). Eventually I got tired of that, dug one of the decommissioned servers back out (Dell 1750 I think) and stuffed it back in as a physical DC. No more issues.

About WSUS, maybe it was because I was using SC Essentials and not the basic WSUS but I found it to be a hassle for me. I do run a comparatively small network but what I found was that if I approve an update, it might be ready on the machines when I get around to doing the update (usually 1-2 weeks later, try and do it twice a month). I don't know if it's BITS slowing it down or what but I could go to each machine and update against MS quicker than I could waiting on WSUS to get the update and push it out.

I'm not sure about SC Essentials because using SCCM to manage WSUS was to mucked up to use.

So I just use plain WSUS for updates (SCCM for app and windows deployment)

In WSUS some updates don't get approved but after I approve or import one itgets out fairly fast.

And its set to check with microsoft daily to download more updates.

BTW from my experience its best to give any SQL VM 2 vCPUs

With WinPak (software by honeywell) if I run a large report then the winpak DB service (which talks to the SQL service) would crash but giving it a 2nd vCPU fixed it.

that way even under high load one vcpu can handle the SQL and the other the software talking to SQL.

reply to exocet_cm
Hyper-v 3.0 offers 16TB XVHDs.
»www.windowsitpro.com/article/vir···0-142834

Outside that you have to use pass-through disks.