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Swiching to Hyper-V 3.0 from VMware

Answered Swiching to Hyper-V 3.0 from VMware

  • Tuesday, November 27, 2012 3:40 PM
     
     
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    I am looking to make the switch.. my questions today are:

    1. Is all the HA with Hyper-V still dependent on failover clustering with CSV? I know we now have shared nothing LM but that seems to really only apply to proactive situation and not true HA. I assume this is also true with replicas? 

    2. What types of storage are you all using? I assume something iSCSI based? Any vendor recommendations? I love how things are looking with SMB 3.0 and SOFS but that still of course requires a solid underlying shared storage.

    3. How are people migrating VMs from VMware? Native tools or something 3rd party like VEEAM? We plan to depoly SCVMM, would that assist? 

     

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  • Tuesday, November 27, 2012 4:05 PM
     
     
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    1 , HA is utilizing failover clustering , Hyper-V replica is not automatic failover so its not HA but usuable for disaster recovery / workload switching

    2 , depending on load / preferences , Shared SAS for smaller sites , and iscsi/fc for lager installs , SMB 3 SOFS is the new kid on the block though

    3 , VMM can help with converting the VM's samt goes for severalt 3rd party og stand alone tools

    my blog is at http://flemmingriis.com , let me know if you found the post or blog helpfull or leaves room for improvement

     
  • Tuesday, November 27, 2012 4:09 PM
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    in regards to 1:

    CSV assumes shared storage, which assumes a SAN with a connection of some type.

    Hyper-V HA is fundamentally no different than VMware HA - it keeps the VM powered on.  And there are more complex rules that you can roll beyond that.  A Replica is a DR feature, not HA.  It is a copy, and requires a manual transition (or some workflow by some workflow engine).

    Shared Nothing Live Migration is a manual triggering option.  It does not require the CSV, but does require an SMB3 share.  It allows moving VMs between Clusters, from local storage to shared storage, etc.  It is a VM mobility option.

    in regards to 3:

    SCVMM will happily migrate your VMs for you.  Plan for down time for each.  Hook SCVMM to your vCenter and suck them over, it will handle the VMware devices and tools and inject the MSFT ones.

    Brian Ehlert
    http://ITProctology.blogspot.com
    Learn. Apply. Repeat.
    Disclaimer: Attempting change is of your own free will.

     
  • Tuesday, November 27, 2012 4:14 PM
     
     
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    Thanks guys.. it sounds like I am not going to get away with not running failover clustering and some type of shared storage.. which is fine. I was just a little too giddy about the shared nothing model before digging in deeper and understand what that really meant. At this point I am trying to lock down a design for the networking and new underlying storage. We are a mid size hosting provider with about 100 VMs and a couple dozen VLANs. Total storage total on our old IBM FC DS4000 SAN (2gb mode) is 9TB but we would like room for growth. 
     
  • Wednesday, November 28, 2012 12:25 AM
     
     
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    I am looking to make the switch.. my questions today are:

    1. Is all the HA with Hyper-V still dependent on failover clustering with CSV? I know we now have shared nothing LM but that seems to really only apply to proactive situation and not true HA. I assume this is also true with replicas? 

    2. What types of storage are you all using? I assume something iSCSI based? Any vendor recommendations? I love how things are looking with SMB 3.0 and SOFS but that still of course requires a solid underlying shared storage.

    3. How are people migrating VMs from VMware? Native tools or something 3rd party like VEEAM? We plan to depoly SCVMM, would that assist? 

    1) Yes. Guest failover cluster needs CVS to keep VMs on and iSCSI or FC (now with Hyper-V 3.0)

    2) SAS, FC, iSCSI and you may also do a Shared Nothing Live Migration (vMotion w/o shared storage) and Hyper-V replica (SRM w/o paying money)

    3) Check this one, there are a plenty of tools to convert images:

    http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/121.hyper-v-tools-en-us.aspx

    After you'll do it boot VM into 'service mode' to replace ESXi hardware -> Hyper-V hardware. With recent versions of Windows it's not a big deal @ all

    StarWind iSCSI SAN & NAS

     
  • Wednesday, November 28, 2012 12:28 AM
     
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    1 , HA is utilizing failover clustering , Hyper-V replica is not automatic failover so its not HA but usuable for disaster recovery / workload switching

    2 , depending on load / preferences , Shared SAS for smaller sites , and iscsi/fc for lager installs , SMB 3 SOFS is the new kid on the block though

    3 , VMM can help with converting the VM's samt goes for severalt 3rd party og stand alone tools

    my blog is at http://flemmingriis.com , let me know if you found the post or blog helpfull or leaves room for improvement

    1) It's possible to PowerShell Hyper-V Replica failover making it automatic:

    http://blogs.technet.com/b/keithmayer/archive/2012/10/05/automate-disaster-recovery-plan-with-windows-server-2012-hyper-v-replica-and-powershell-3-0.aspx#.ULVbH4d1GSo

    (but I'd avoid doing this because of a possible split brain issue). Biggest issue with Hyper-V Replica - it's pure async tool so ~5 minutes of a data will be lost. Very flexed RPO is required...

    2) SoFS still require SAS or FC or iSCSI (or third-party DAS replication stack) to run. So not an option by itself. Keeping all VMs on a simple SMB 3.0 share is plain stupid (or pure non-production) - single point of failure.

    3) Getting VMM is a high price for just a converter :) I'd stick with any of the free tools using link from my other post. There are TONS of them.

    StarWind iSCSI SAN & NAS


     
  • Wednesday, November 28, 2012 12:37 AM
     
     
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    Thanks guys.. it sounds like I am not going to get away with not running failover clustering and some type of shared storage.. which is fine. I was just a little too giddy about the shared nothing model before digging in deeper and understand what that really meant. At this point I am trying to lock down a design for the networking and new underlying storage. We are a mid size hosting provider with about 100 VMs and a couple dozen VLANs. Total storage total on our old IBM FC DS4000 SAN (2gb mode) is 9TB but we would like room for growth. 

    Google for other possible options. There are third-party software stacks doing DAS-to-DAS synchronous replication (StarWind, SteelEye, DataCore to name a few running natively on Windows, I'd personally stay away from the pure VSA concept because of a guest VM overhead). So you'll end with all of the fault tolerant SAN & NAS features with only a pair of Hyper-V hosts and no other hardware. See the picture on this page:

    http://www.starwindsoftware.com/native-san-for-hyper-v-benefits

    It illustrates the whole idea (product-independent of course). 

     

    StarWind iSCSI SAN & NAS

     
  • Wednesday, November 28, 2012 3:55 PM
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    Just to clarify.

    CSV is only required when using physically attached shared storage - SAN w/ iSCSI, FC, HBA or some type

    And it is only required when more than one VHD is stored on a single LUN.

    CSV is not possible nor required with the SMB3 share option.  The share is the shared storage and the File Server is where the CSV would reside, not at the Hyper-V Server.

    Brian Ehlert
    http://ITProctology.blogspot.com
    Learn. Apply. Repeat.
    Disclaimer: Attempting change is of your own free will.

     
  • Thursday, November 29, 2012 3:39 PM
     
     
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    Thanks all.. this helps greatly. I believe our underlying storage will be an iSCSI SAN. How common is it to actually store each VHD on a sep LUN? That seems like an administrative nightmare!
     
  • Thursday, November 29, 2012 5:12 PM
     
     
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    You are right.  Storing each VM on its own separate LUN is an administrative nightmare.  That was an initial requirement if you wanted to be able to failover individual VMs.  Nobody really liked that, so Microsoft came up with CSV and everybody loved its capabilities.  It is very rare now to see someone put a VM on its own LUN.  There are some situations, but not many.

    tim

     
  • Thursday, November 29, 2012 10:13 PM
     
     
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    right on.. any thoughts on StarWind iSCSI SAN with DAS? We were looking at a NetApp or something similar but I am liking the StarWind solutions more and more. 
     
  • Monday, December 03, 2012 5:33 AM
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    Hi,

    StarWind iSCSI SAN is an iSCSI Target that converts any Windows server into a SAN. This tool provides the wide range of storage management and data protection features.

    According to StarWind iSCSI SAN software function description; you can use StarWind iSCSI SAN software to convert a Server which has DAS connected into a SAN, and then you can use the SAN to deploy Hyper-V Cluster with Cluster Shared Volumes.

    You can do that, but we didn’t test such solutions, we recommend user to use a real SAN storage or DAS storage.

    Note: some DAS storage doesn’t support cluster technology.

    For more information please refer to following MS articles:

    Requirements for Using Cluster Shared Volumes in a Failover Cluster in Windows Server 2008 R2
    http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff182358(v=ws.10).aspx
    Recommendations for Using Cluster Shared Volumes in a Failover Cluster in Windows Server 2008 R2
    http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff182320(v=ws.10).aspx

    Hope this helps!

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    Lawrence

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  • Friday, December 07, 2012 2:38 AM
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    Hi,

    I would like to confirm what is the current situation? Have you resolved the problem or do you have any further progress?

    If there is anything that we can do for you, please do not hesitate to let us know, and we will be happy to help.

    Lawrence

    TechNet Community Support

     
  • Friday, December 14, 2012 9:16 AM
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    Hi,

    As this thread has been quiet for a while, we assume that the issue has been resolved. At this time, we will mark it as 'Answered' as the previous steps should be helpful for many similar scenarios.

    If the issue still persists and you want to return to this question, please reply this post directly so we will be notified to follow it up. You can also choose to unmark the answer as you wish.

    In addition, we'd love to hear your feedback about the solution. By sharing your experience you can help other community members facing similar problems.

    Thanks!

    Lawrence

    TechNet Community Support