revo1059
asked on
Looking for advice on hyper-v storage
We are a small software company. We use hyper-v to host many servers both for testing our software and for providing customer facing services.
Right now, we have about 40 VMs spread over 5 hyper-v servers. Most VMs are testing machines and are not critical. However, we do have a few machines running Oracle Database and some web services.
Right now, we have the critical VMs on three physical hyper-v servers. These servers have a mix of HDDs and SSDs.
We are starting to hit the limit of internal storage on some of our servers and I have been tasked with finding a better solution.
I have been testing FreeNAS using iSCSI. I have also been thinking of changing our hypervisor from hyper-v to Xenserver (the open source version called xcp-ng). I am thinking about this change because of the replication options, central management of all the VMs as well as clustering and disaster recovery.
Our main concern is if we use FreeNAS to host all the VM storage and that FreeNAS server goes down, all our machines go down also.
I am aware that FreeNAS has a commercial counterpart called TrueNAS that has a HA option however even the basic models are out of our price range.
My main question is, what is the best way to get the most reliable and also fast storage for 5 to 6 hyper-v servers that can fail over in the event that one server goes down?
Right now, we have about 40 VMs spread over 5 hyper-v servers. Most VMs are testing machines and are not critical. However, we do have a few machines running Oracle Database and some web services.
Right now, we have the critical VMs on three physical hyper-v servers. These servers have a mix of HDDs and SSDs.
We are starting to hit the limit of internal storage on some of our servers and I have been tasked with finding a better solution.
I have been testing FreeNAS using iSCSI. I have also been thinking of changing our hypervisor from hyper-v to Xenserver (the open source version called xcp-ng). I am thinking about this change because of the replication options, central management of all the VMs as well as clustering and disaster recovery.
Our main concern is if we use FreeNAS to host all the VM storage and that FreeNAS server goes down, all our machines go down also.
I am aware that FreeNAS has a commercial counterpart called TrueNAS that has a HA option however even the basic models are out of our price range.
My main question is, what is the best way to get the most reliable and also fast storage for 5 to 6 hyper-v servers that can fail over in the event that one server goes down?
What would the fabric be between the Hyper-V servers and the VHDX storage?
A Storage Spaces Direct 2-Node cluster setup would do the job quite well. Depending on the storage setup IOPS could be as little as 10K and head up into the six figure zone. Storage can be in the Terabytes as well. A 10GbE fabric would be the place to start with 2 switches minimum.
A Storage Spaces Direct 2-Node cluster setup would do the job quite well. Depending on the storage setup IOPS could be as little as 10K and head up into the six figure zone. Storage can be in the Terabytes as well. A 10GbE fabric would be the place to start with 2 switches minimum.
ASKER
I have thought about using storage spaces direct however that requires the Datacenter version of Windows Server which is $5k+ plus per copy with a min of 2 servers. It also requires certified hardware which means $$$. That alone takes it off the table.
As far as the cloud, that would be very expensive as well as difficult to setup (based on our network config, etc).
We do have a 10GbE card in a few of the hyper-v servers as well as a 10GbE switch. We use this for storage migration and replication of some of the critical servers.
As far as the cloud, that would be very expensive as well as difficult to setup (based on our network config, etc).
We do have a 10GbE card in a few of the hyper-v servers as well as a 10GbE switch. We use this for storage migration and replication of some of the critical servers.
SPLA the DC license. It's a lot smaller a nut to crack at the monthly rate.
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As with everything, the answer will depend on your budget, but you could use shared storage for a Hyper-V cluster.
You might also want to look at using Cloud Services to host customer facing systems that need high uptime. Cloud services can more cost effecitively provide redundancies and scaling in most cases - including redundant internet connections, backup power, etc. that could be cost prohibitive if you try to do it.