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Microsoft® Hyper-V® 

Implementation Guide for 

Dell™ PowerVault™ MD Series 

Storage Arrays 

A Dell™ Technical White Paper 

Dell PowerVault™ MD32X0, MD32X0i, and 
MD36X0i 

 

Summary of Contents for Dell PowerVault MD32X0

Page 1: ...Microsoft Hyper V Implementation Guide for Dell PowerVault MD Series Storage Arrays A Dell Technical White Paper Dell PowerVault MD32X0 MD32X0i and MD36X0i ...

Page 2: ...rictly forbidden For more information contact Dell Dell the DELL logo and the DELL badge PowerConnect and PowerVault are trademarks of Dell Inc Microsoft Windows Windows Server Hyper V and Active Directory are either trademarks or registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and or other countries Intel and Itanium are registered trademarks of the Intel Corporation Other tra...

Page 3: ...ons When Using Pass through Physical Disks or VHDs 10 Directly Mapped iSCSI Virtual Disks to the VM MD32X0i and MD36X0i 11 Setting Up VMs with VHDs 11 Setting Up VMs with Pass through Devices 16 Adding a Pass through Device to an Existing VM 16 Creating a New VM Using Pass through Disks Only 17 Clustering with Hyper V 19 Creating Clusters 22 Adding Hyper V to the Cluster 23 Configuring a Virtual M...

Page 4: ...rk Configuration 7 Figure 5 MD36X0i Network Configuration 7 Figure 6 Virtual Storage Configuration 10 Figure 7 Example of Virtual Disk Created 12 Figure 8 Settings for New Physical Disks 16 Figure 9 Logical View of Example VM 17 Figure 10 Settings for Win2003_PT_Boot 19 Figure 11 SAS MD32X0 Configuration in a Clustered Environment 20 Figure 12 MD32X0i iSCSI Configuration in a Clustered Environment...

Page 5: ... Hyper V on the DELL PowerVault MD32X0 MD32X0i and MD36X0i Series of Storage Arrays For information about backup and recovery options refer to Data Protection on the Dell PowerVault MD32X0 MD32X0i and MD36X0i Series of Storage Arrays in a Hyper V Environment This document is intended to provide useful information for system administrators and IT planners or designers who are implementing Hyper V i...

Page 6: ...processing features on your system A x64 based processor Hyper V is not available for 32 bit systems or Intel Itanium based systems Hardware assisted virtualization Processors with Intel Virtualization Technology Intel VT AMD Virtualization Technology AMD V Hardware enforced data execution prevention DEP must be available and enabled The Intel XD bit must be enabled execution disable bit The AMD N...

Page 7: ...rom each one to improve availability With this configuration either a cable or a SAS HBA can fail and the access to the data is still guaranteed For more information about the MD32X0 storage array go to this website http www dell com content products productdetails aspx pvaul_MD3200 c us cs 555 l en s biz dgc IR cid 14054 lid 407200 Figure 2 demonstrates how to configure a Microsoft Hyper V enviro...

Page 8: ...2 Dell PowerVault MD32X0i Storage Array IP SAN Figure 3 Dell PowerVault MD36X0i Storage Array IP SAN For the iSCSI based MD32X0i or MD36X0i storage array you must have two NICs for I O communication to occur between the storage array and each server It is best practice to set up the management ports ...

Page 9: ...tion For best performance when planning the network connection to the MD32X0i or MD36X0i storage array make sure that the cabling looks similar to Figure 4 and Figure 5 respectively these configurations use maximum performance by using all the ports on each controller however a minimum of two connections is recommended Figure 4 MD32X0i Network Configuration Figure 5 MD36X0i Network Configuration ...

Page 10: ...speeds Least Queue Depth with Subset The least queue depth with subset policy is also known as the least I Os or least requests policy This policy routes the next I O request to a data path that has the least outstanding I O requests queued For this policy an I O request is simply a command in the queue These types of command or the number of blocks that are associated with the command are not con...

Page 11: ...ns 6 Click Install Installation Results 7 Click Close Note Use dedicated network connections for the VMs After you restart the server you can create the VMs Considerations for the Virtual Storage You can assign physical storage to a VM in various ways For an out of band PowerVault MD32X0 MD32X0i or MD36X0i storage array you have these options Assign the virtual disk to the parent server and create...

Page 12: ...pported VHDs support the ability to export the drive to another parent server VHDs support VM checkpoints Both VHDs and pass through physical disks can be used in clustered environments If you are booting from a pass through physical disk store the VM files in a different location For each VM create a separate pass through physical disk You cannot share a pass through physical disk for two VMs The...

Page 13: ...A is not supported with the MD3200i storage array Only software initiators are supported with the MD32X0i and MD36X0i storage array Note You can use direct mapping for data devices that were originally used on a physical server or for data devices that you want to move back to a physical server Setting Up VMs with VHDs First confirm that the PowerVault MD32X0 MD32X0i or MD36X0i storage array is co...

Page 14: ...parate from other data access 2 Map the newly created virtual disks to the Hyper V parent server 3 Go to Computer Management and select Disk Management under the Storage section in the left pane 4 Right click all of the new drives and select the Online option 5 Initialize all of the new drives 6 Create the partitions and format the new drives For easy reference name the test drives in Windows with...

Page 15: ... Configure Networking 7 Select the type of network connection you want to use for the VM 8 Click Next Connect Virtual Hard Disk 9 You can create a new VHD use an existing hard disk or attach a VHD later If you want to create a VHD select Create a virtual hard disk and enter the name location and size If you want to select an existing VHD select Use an existing virtual hard disk and enter the locat...

Page 16: ...hing is virtual performance difference does not exist between the IDE and the SCSI controller Use the SCSI controller to attach more physical disks if needed The IDE controller is limited to two physical disks per controller The boot disk must be IDE 3 Click Add New Virtual Hard Disk Wizard Choose Disk Type 4 In the New Virtual Hard Disk dialog select the options for VHD Dynamic expansion The VHD ...

Page 17: ...ecify Name and Location 6 Specify the name and the location of the new physical disk 7 Click Next For example the VM1DATA disk formatted as drive F was used Configure Disk 8 Create a new blank virtual disk 9 If you have data stored on a different physical disk and you want to make the data available to your virtual disk select the appropriate physical disk Hyper V converts the disk into a VHD 10 C...

Page 18: ...describes how to set up VMs with pass through devices You can add a pass through device to an existing VM or create a new VM using pass through devices only Adding a Pass through Device to an Existing VM 1 Create virtual disks for recently defined VMs on the MD32X0 MD32X0i or MD36X0i storage array 2 Map the virtual disk to the VM In the example the VM1PASSTHROUGH virtual disk is mapped to the Wind...

Page 19: ...Only This section shows you how to create a VM using pass through disks only You can boot from a pass through device but you need a regular virtual disk on which to store the configuration data for the VM In the example three virtual disks were created on the MD32X0 MD32X0i or MD36X0i storage array Figure 9 shows a boot disk for the operating system of the VM a data disk and a 1 GB disk for the VM...

Page 20: ...k Next Assign Memory 7 Assign memory and networking 8 Click Next Connect Virtual Hard Disk 9 When the wizard asks you which physical disk you want to attach select Attach Virtual Hard Drive Later 10 Click Finish 4 Go to the settings of the newly created VM 5 Select the IDE controller and add a physical disk The boot disk must be attached to the IDE controller 6 Associate the physical disk with the...

Page 21: ... hardware including chipsets which will eliminate issues regarding failover The supported list of servers can be found here http support dell com support edocs software HyperV en Avoid having a single point of failure in your communications network Connect cluster nodes through a network that uses redundant switches or similar hardware Note You can connect cluster nodes with a single network Howev...

Page 22: ...SCSI traffic on the same adapter in clustered configurations All cluster nodes must be able to communicate with the same virtual disks on the MD32X0 MD32X0i or MD36X0i storage array You can use storage partitioning to create a server group with the cluster nodes and assign the necessary virtual disk to them Make sure that only the cluster nodes have access to those virtual disks Make sure that oth...

Page 23: ... MD32X0 MD32X0i and MD36X0i Series of Storage Arrays Implementing Hyper V Page 21 Figure 12 MD32X0i iSCSI Configuration in a Clustered Environment Figure 13 MD36X0i iSCSI Configuration in a Clustered Environment ...

Page 24: ...gh Availability feature of the Windows Server 2008 by performing these steps Start this procedure by using the Computer Management Wizard Table 5 Computer Management Wizard Page Action Computer Management 1 Select Features Task Select Features 2 Click Add Feature and select Failover Clustering 3 Click Next Administrative Tools Failover Cluster Manager 4 In Administrative Tools open Failover Cluste...

Page 25: ... VMs to a cluster that was previously defined without the high availability option you must manually add the dependencies of your storage to your VMs If you do not perform this task the VMs fail during cluster movements To perform this task go to the Storage section of the Failover Cluster Manager Right click the drives and select Add to Resource Pass through devices do not show up in this section...

Page 26: ...rectly you can use the Live Migration feature of the Windows Server 2008 Release 2 operating system for VMs The Live Migration feature can be very useful if you need to balance workloads between different nodes in your cluster or if you need to shut down one node for maintenance To use the Live Migration feature you must use Cluster Shared Volumes CSVs for your VMs CSV must be available for all of...

Page 27: ... shared volume 5 Select Create a virtual hard disk 6 For the location select the same directory as you did in step 3 If you plan to use another cluster shared volume s for the vhd select the appropriate directory Configure Networking 7 Associate the VM configuration with the newly created drive 8 Click Next Assign Memory 9 Assign memory and networking 10 Click Finish Note Make sure that the VM is ...

Page 28: ...ws the VM that you chose in step 3 5 Click Next Configure High Availability A status bar shows the progress of the configuration Summary This page shows if the configuration was successful 6 Select View Report to view the report 7 Click Finish You can now turn on the VM You can select the VM and use the Live Migration feature to move the VM from one node in the cluster to another node ...

Page 29: ...ng is correct On the iSCSI initiator make sure that you have access to all of the targets of the MD3200i storage array Check any network problems Run the dsmUtil command to make sure that all paths are available This utility comes with the MDSM MPIO and it is located in the following directory on x64 servers C Program Files x86 DSMDrivers md3dsm Use the g option and enter the target ID of your MD3...

Page 30: ... LunPathDevice 0xFFFFFADF9C1E2290 IoCount 0 DevState OPTIMAL RemoveState 0x0 StartState 0x0 PowerState 0x0 Controller B Path NumLunObjects 1 RoundRobinIndex 1 Path 1 LunPathDevice 0xFFFFFADF98793410 IoCount 0 DevState OPTIMAL RemoveState 0x0 StartState 0x0 PowerState 0x0 If you have issues with clustering make sure that all of the cluster nodes can access the storage array Test to see if you can m...

Page 31: ...luster verification test and correct any outstanding clustering issues For information about troubleshooting MD32X0 MD32X0i and MD36X0i storage arrays refer to the Troubleshooting Problems chapter of the Dell PowerVault Modular Disk Storage Manager User s Guide Go to this website http support dell com support edocs systems MD3200 en index htm Contact Information Go to this website http www dell co...

Page 32: ...erVault Modular Disk Storage Manager User s Guide http support dell com support edocs systems MD3200 en UG HTML iscsi htm Microsoft 2007 How to Align Exchange I O with Storage Track Boundaries http technet microsoft com en us library aa998219 aspx Microsoft 2007 Planning Storage Configurations for Exchange 2007 http technet microsoft com en us library bb124518 aspx Microsoft 2008 Microsoft Storage...

Page 33: ...hernet NIC network Node An addressable entity connected to an input output I O bus or network and used primarily to refer to computers storage devices and storage arrays The component of a node that connects to the bus or network is a port The Dictionary of Storage Networking Terminology Pass through physical disk An unformatted physical disk directly assigned to the virtual machine Portal A servi...

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