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SAN Storage solution in combination w/ Server 2012 R2 (HYPER-V)

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    Hello everyone,

    We are currently in talks with 2 storage vendors (IBM and NETAPP) in order to replace/expand our current SAN storage and finally make the move to a virtualized environment (HYPER-V).

    For the NETAPP side, they proposed a FAS3220 for our main location and a FAS2240 for our DR location, both running Clustered ONTAP 8.2. For the IBM side, they proposed a couple of V3700's (under SVC).

    I'm aware this isn't the place to discuss these things in depth, but could anyone who has any experience w/ both solutions in combination w/ Server 2012 (R2) and HYPER-V recommend one solution over the other? Or is anyone in possession of a feature list for both solutions?

    Any help will be greatly appreciated.

    With Kind Regard,

    L.


    • Edited by elaurens Monday, October 14, 2013 3:46 PM
    Monday, October 14, 2013 3:45 PM
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    Hello everyone,

    We are currently in talks with 2 storage vendors (IBM and NETAPP) in order to replace/expand our current SAN storage and finally make the move to a virtualized environment (HYPER-V).

    For the NETAPP side, they proposed a FAS3220 for our main location and a FAS2240 for our DR location, both running Clustered ONTAP 8.2. For the IBM side, they proposed a couple of V3700's (under SVC).

    I'm aware this isn't the place to discuss these things in depth, but could anyone who has any experience w/ both solutions in combination w/ Server 2012 (R2) and HYPER-V recommend one solution over the other? Or is anyone in possession of a feature list for both solutions?

    Any help will be greatly appreciated.

    With Kind Regard,

    L.


    You should avoid NetApp when thinking about Hyper-V deployment. For a reason: NetApp "internals" are a pure filer built around WAFL and NFS being a direct interface to it. So for environments where you need to talk NFS (VMware ESXi and any *nixes with a good client NFS implementation) NetApp really shines. As Hyper-V has no support for NFS in terms of a VMs storage and pretty much never will, Windows having very low performing NFS support as a client (latency is ridiculous, 10x-100x times higher compared to FreeBSD running on the same hardware) and iSCSI with NetApp is a bolt-on solution (basically it's a file on a local WAFL partition and iSCSI uplink) you're not going to have the best performance and good features coverage. Up to the point when NetApp would do SMB 3.0 in production for a couple of years. So picking up between IBM and NetApp in your case assuming these are only two options - go IBM. If you need a SAN for your environment and can think twice - think about virtual SAN. That's what big hypervisor boys are doing.

    StarWind iSCSI SAN & NAS

    Wednesday, October 16, 2013 11:31 AM
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    Hi,

    The hardware have so much trait, but for the Hyper-v basic requirement and the more convenience maybe the following article may be help you make the decision.

    The virtual Fiber Channel feature - Hyper-V Virtual Fibre Channel Overview

    http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh831413.aspx

    Hyper-V Storage

    http://download.microsoft.com/documents/italy/SBP/server2012/Poster%20Companion%20Reference%20-%20Hyper-V%20and%20Failover%20Clustering.pdf

    Hope this helps.

    Alex Lv

    Wednesday, October 16, 2013 8:38 AM
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    Hello everyone,

    We are currently in talks with 2 storage vendors (IBM and NETAPP) in order to replace/expand our current SAN storage and finally make the move to a virtualized environment (HYPER-V).

    For the NETAPP side, they proposed a FAS3220 for our main location and a FAS2240 for our DR location, both running Clustered ONTAP 8.2. For the IBM side, they proposed a couple of V3700's (under SVC).

    I'm aware this isn't the place to discuss these things in depth, but could anyone who has any experience w/ both solutions in combination w/ Server 2012 (R2) and HYPER-V recommend one solution over the other? Or is anyone in possession of a feature list for both solutions?

    Any help will be greatly appreciated.

    With Kind Regard,

    L.


    You should avoid NetApp when thinking about Hyper-V deployment. For a reason: NetApp "internals" are a pure filer built around WAFL and NFS being a direct interface to it. So for environments where you need to talk NFS (VMware ESXi and any *nixes with a good client NFS implementation) NetApp really shines. As Hyper-V has no support for NFS in terms of a VMs storage and pretty much never will, Windows having very low performing NFS support as a client (latency is ridiculous, 10x-100x times higher compared to FreeBSD running on the same hardware) and iSCSI with NetApp is a bolt-on solution (basically it's a file on a local WAFL partition and iSCSI uplink) you're not going to have the best performance and good features coverage. Up to the point when NetApp would do SMB 3.0 in production for a couple of years. So picking up between IBM and NetApp in your case assuming these are only two options - go IBM. If you need a SAN for your environment and can think twice - think about virtual SAN. That's what big hypervisor boys are doing.

    StarWind iSCSI SAN & NAS

    Wednesday, October 16, 2013 11:31 AM
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    First, the question was never about NFS support, it was about support for hyper-v from Netapp or IBM Storewize.  For Hyper-V, Netapp does support iSCSI and Fibre Channel which has nothing to do NFS nor NFS is an interface for the SAN protocols.  You are repeating what people used to say 8 years ago when Netapp began to offer SAN, that it was a SAN on top of a NAS.  People said thay they were crazy because of virtualizing a storage solution, but guess what? Everyone is doing it now after Netapp grew to be a 6+ billion company.  One more thing, clustered ontap 8.2 also supports SMB3 for Hyper-V 2012. 

    Since there will be a disaster recovery site with a 2240 it would also have to be running Clustered Ontap to support snapmirror (thin replication, dedupe aware).  With snapdrive and snapmanager for hyper-V you can automate consistent inline backups as well as replication and disaster recovery tasks.



    • Edited by Altek12 Tuesday, November 26, 2013 11:42 PM
    • Proposed as answer by willstowe Sunday, March 16, 2014 6:47 PM
    Tuesday, November 26, 2013 11:38 PM
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    First, the question was never about NFS support, it was about support for hyper-v from Netapp or IBM Storewize.  For Hyper-V, Netapp does support iSCSI and Fibre Channel which has nothing to do NFS nor NFS is an interface for the SAN protocols.  You are repeating what people used to say 8 years ago when Netapp began to offer SAN, that it was a SAN on top of a NAS.  People said thay they were crazy because of virtualizing a storage solution, but guess what? Everyone is doing it now after Netapp grew to be a 6+ billion company.  One more thing, clustered ontap 8.2 also supports SMB3 for Hyper-V 2012. 

    [ ... ]



    NetApp is still a filer inside with 8.2 as NFS v4 and now SMB 3.0 do map directly to WAFL file structure and iSCSI/FC LUs are just a files on WAFL partitions. Everyone is doing DAS and virtual SAN now :)

    StarWind VSAN [Virtual SAN] clusters Hyper-V without SAS, Fibre Channel, SMB 3.0 or iSCSI, uses Ethernet to mirror internally mounted SATA disks between hosts.

    Sunday, March 16, 2014 11:53 PM
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