How to use available local storage to create VMs?
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Monday, January 28, 2013 4:11 PM
I have a server with 8, 900Gb SAS drives. I've created an 80Gb partition using the LSI RAID controller and installed 2012 Hyper-V to that partition. The remainder of the space from all disks is available to use for creating my VMs.
When I'm in Hyper-V manager...how do I get Hyper-V to see the remaining disk size that's available to actually begin creating my VMs?
Should I reboot the server, go into the RAID BIOS and create a single. logical partition, or will Hyper-V, somehow, "see" the raw disk size that's available? Do I need to create a storage pool?
I'm sure this is probably pretty basic, but I'm new to Hyper-V so I'm not sure how to present the available drive size to Hyper-V so I can start creating my VMs.
Thank you,
Ed
All Replies
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Monday, January 28, 2013 4:55 PMConfigure pass-thru disk (as lot of limitations) or just spawn a VHD/VHDX and add this file as a disk to your VMs of interest.
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Monday, January 28, 2013 5:22 PM
Thanks for the suggestion, but I'd like to avoid using third-party software - that's one less thing I have to troubleshoot and I'm sure 2012 Hyper-V has what's necessary already built-in.
Thank you for the suggestion though.
Ed
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Monday, January 28, 2013 9:46 PM Hyper-V will recognize disks formatted as NTFS. So with your RAID software, create one or more volumes to use by Hyper-V. Bring them up in Hyper-V and initialize them and format them to NTFS. You could create them as pass-through, but then you don't get all the benefits of virtual hard drives, and there is basically no performance difference. I would just create a large volume for storing my virtual hard drives and store them all there. When you go to create a virtual machine, Hyper-V will ask you where you want to store the VHD. By default, it will store it on the C: drive, but you can specify any recognized drive on your system.
.:|:.:|:. tim
- Marked As Answer by Lawrence LvMicrosoft Contingent Staff, Moderator Tuesday, January 29, 2013 7:57 AM
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Monday, January 28, 2013 10:03 PM
Thanks for the suggestion, but I'd like to avoid using third-party software - that's one less thing I have to troubleshoot and I'm sure 2012 Hyper-V has what's necessary already built-in.
Thank you for the suggestion though.
Ed
?!?
Where did you see I've said ANYTHING about third-party software? Everything I've told could be done with Hyper-V out-of-box.
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Monday, January 28, 2013 10:07 PM
Excellent! Thank you Tim!
I use a Windows 7 PC with RSAT tools (Hyper-V Manager) to manage my Hyper-V server.
Can you be a little more specific and tell me what you mean when you say "Bring them up in Hyper-V"...??? What steps do I take? Do I use Disk Manager or am I creating a Storage Pool...???
Thank you again!
Ed
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Monday, January 28, 2013 11:52 PM
Excellent! Thank you Tim!
I use a Windows 7 PC with RSAT tools (Hyper-V Manager) to manage my Hyper-V server.
Can you be a little more specific and tell me what you mean when you say "Bring them up in Hyper-V"...??? What steps do I take? Do I use Disk Manager or am I creating a Storage Pool...???
Thank you again!
Ed
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc742412.aspx
To add a hard disk to a virtual machine-
Open Hyper-V Manager. Click Start, point to Administrative Tools, and then click Hyper-V Manager.
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In the results pane, under Virtual Machines, select the virtual machine that you want to configure.
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In the Action pane, under the virtual machine name, click Settings.
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In the navigation pane (left pane), click the controller that you want to attach the disk to.
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Click Add.
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On the Hard Drive page, select the location on the controller to attach the disk.
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Under Media, do one of the following:
- Specify the location of the virtual hard disk (.vhd) file.
- Specify a physical hard disk.
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Click OK.
Obviously you need to create a volume and format it before placing VHD/VHDX files on it you'll later feed to your VMs.
- Marked As Answer by Lawrence LvMicrosoft Contingent Staff, Moderator Tuesday, January 29, 2013 7:57 AM
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Monday, January 28, 2013 11:57 PM
Excellent...thank you for the specifics!
:-)
Ed
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Tuesday, January 29, 2013 1:23 PM
I'm not talking about using a physical hard drive directly attached to a virtual machine. I see fewer benefits to that than in creating VHDs on the physical hard drive. You cannot take a snapshot of a physical hard drive as you can with a VHD. The physical hard drive is not as portable as a VHD.
What I mean by bringing it up on Hyper-V is the typical process of intializing and formatting a hard drive like we have been doing for years with Windows. Whether you use disk manager or diskpart, however you want to initialize and format a drive into an NTFS volume I will leave to you.
.:|:.:|:. tim
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