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Windows Server 2012 and Hyper V setup

Tags:
  • NAS / RAID
  • Windows Server
  • Business Computing
  • SQL Server
Last response: in Business Computing
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August 25, 2013 11:33:10 PM

Hi,

I have a new server, which has a RAID 1 array of 2 x 300gb and RAID 5 array of 4 x 900gb and have questions about general configuration of Windows Server 2012 Standard and installation of 2 Win Server 2012 VMs.

1. Firstly, do I need to partition the arrays or just leave RAID 1 array as c:\ and RAID 5 array as d:\ (i.e. 1 volume for each array)?

2. I was thinking of installing Host + 1 VM (Sql Server) on RAID 1 array, AND the second VM (Domain Controller) on RAID 5 array?

3. What is the best configuration for setup of VHDs and VMs where i am intending to run a 1 VM for a file server/SQL Server and 1 VM for domain controller? That is, whether there should be separate VHDs for data and hence two VHDs for each VM, or alternatively should I have just 1 VHD for each VM. So:

RAID 1 ARRAY = Host OS + balance for VHD for 1 VM
RAID 5 array = entirely allocated a VHD for the second VM for SQL server/file server?

Your thoughts would be much appreciated.

I have read various articles and would love some feedback.

Thanks

Vinal.

More about : windows server 2012 hyper setup

August 25, 2013 11:48:03 PM

1. No, you can do whatever you want. Even thou you know there are 6 hard drives, the computer sees only 2, and you can partition them any way you want.
2. That works.
3. In my opinion I would have the VM's VHD's and Host on raid 1, while having the data for your file server, sql, and DC(if it's big, sounds small thou) on separate vhd's on the 5.

If you really want the extra failsafe for the DC vm, then you can put it on the 5 with it's own vhd, but if you got another source of backup somewhere then it shouldn't be no big deal with putting it on the 1.

Edit: forgot to mention that you could partition the 5 into three partitions instead of throwing vhd's on it, and give acess to the vm's with their own individiual partition. This has the benefit of skipping some recovery steps and gaining a touch of performance, but at a loss of some security depending. It's all up to you thou.
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August 26, 2013 6:44:45 AM

How you partition your drives is really dependent upon how you need to allocate or separate storage. Really in the case of just running Hyper-V VHDs I wouldn't recommend any additional or different partitions.

Setting up your VHDs for the optimal performance can sometimes take just a little bit of trial and error. The good thing with a virtual environment is you can move around your VHDs to different arrays and test right away what your performance throughput is going to be. This is probably going to be your best way of determining the proper performance for you.

Initially this is what I would probably go with. Set up each of your VMs with a small fixed size VHDX for the operating system only. This makes it a little more modular so you can attach and remove additional storage as needed. You can even get fancy if you're allocating a lot of RAM to the VHDs and attach a separate VHD file for your pagefile, as I have heard some people putting in a non-RAID small capacity SSD just for this purpose. As stated you just add additional VHDs (fixed or dynamically expanding depending upon the performance and capacity needs) and attach those with the VM.

Where to place them is a little more where you may have to do some trial and error. I would think that running the smallest VHD with the virtual machine operating system on the 300 GB RAID 1 array would be fine, and using your RAID 5 to store the additional data VHDs, but in the end you might have better performance capabilities in certain tasks by putting all of them on your RAID 5 array. I don't know how much storage headroom you have, though, as that could decrease the storage you have to work with on your RAID 5 array by 80 to 100 GB.
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August 29, 2013 6:25:09 PM

Thank you memadmax and choucove for your replies.

You have given good insight, as I had not considered partitioning the RAID 5 array for data and giving the VMs access to the entire VM.

I have read a lot of articles on RAID 10 being a more recommended option than RAID 5. For a 900GB X 4 disks, would you recommend that RAID 10 will be much safer and preferable to running a RAID 5 array or would RAID 5 be ok for my purposes? Your thoughts would be great. Thanks.
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August 29, 2013 6:56:46 PM

Ehh, It depends, you could but you would lose parity and striping. 10 is 2 or more raid 1's, so it's mirrors of mirrors. 5 has parity and striping. It's up to you but 5 is prolly your best bet, although you didn't mention how much load your servers are gonna be running, it sounds like you are building a small business server so ur gonna have to balance out performance and reliability on the same server.
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August 29, 2013 7:18:48 PM

Thank you for your reply. Sorry I did not state the load. But, yes that's correct. The server is for a small business - 5 users and one of the VMs running SQL Server will also be a Remote Desktop Services (TS) - running Word, Excel, Outlook etc and an accounting software. Thanks.
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August 29, 2013 8:52:59 PM

I'd recommend RAID 10 over RAID 5 for pretty much any scenario. It has greater fault tolerance and performance, but it is more costly for the same amount of storage capacity. Even after talking with several of the server experts from both Dell and HP they have all recommended running RAID 10 any time you're working with databases, and a situation where you may be running multiple simultaneous VMs from that same storage array. If all you need is storage for files such as word documents and pictures to be accessed across a single gigabit link, then RAID 5 is fine, but otherwise RAID 10 will offer greater resiliency and performance.

If possible, I'd recommend separating your SQL server from your remote desktop session host. I'm not an SQL expert, but again every time I've talked with the server experts at Dell and HP they have always recommended keeping your SQL server as separate from everything as possible due to resource utilization. It's also recommended that you keep your RDSH server segmented from everything else because you're going to be having users logging into it. Put only the things you need your users to have access directly to on that server.
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August 29, 2013 9:32:46 PM

Thank you for your reply. I actually got the server from Dell and they did not bother suggesting to me to get a RAID 10 array. In any case, I will consider RAID 5 still as mainly dealing with documents. Will there be a massive performance hit on the server when re-building a failed drive on a 900GB x 4 disks array?

Do you then suggest then running the SQL server on Domain Controller VM?
Thanks.

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August 30, 2013 6:50:19 AM

Ideally most scenarios would call for putting your SQL database servers in their own VMs separate from everything else. This allows for greater flexibility in assigning resources as needed. Additionally, you are compartmentalizing so that major changes to one thing in the VM doesn't also affect another. In the case of using the SQL server on your Domain Controller VM, if you have to make some change that requires reboot or extended period of down time with your domain controller, you are also taking your SQL server offline. And vice versa, say you need to make some software changes or have your SQL server down for some reason, you are also now taking your domain controller offline.

Each situation is going to be unique. Depending upon your expected needs and the resources available to you, setting up your SQL database on your domain controller may be feasible. Generally a domain controller doesn't require a whole lot of resources.

I did have a question for you, though. Why 4 X 900 GB drives? I'm assuming these would be the 900 GB 15k SAS drives. If you are mainly needing this for data storage of things like documents, spreadsheets, and photos, then there's no need for that kind of drive. You can get a 1 TB SATA hard drive for a fraction of the cost, still running in RAID 5, and have plenty of throughput for that. You are limited by your network throughput on a gigabit network connection at that point anyways.

Again, I don't know the specifics on what type of storage you need and your exact server specifications, but what I would probably recommend would be setting up two separate storage arrays. For instance, use two 600 GB or 900 GB 15k SAS drives in RAID 1 to run your OS and the virtual machine hard drives which run their individual OS, as well as your SQL database. Then install two 2 TB 7k SATA drives in RAID 1 for your data storage. Create a VHD file on this drive and attach it to your domain controller, as this will become your shared data location for your documents, pictures, etc. I don't know if you have more room than that for additional storage drives, but using just the four drives this would be more like what I could see for specializing your performance and getting the best of both worlds.
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August 30, 2013 8:39:50 PM

I wouldn't run the DB and DC on the same VM either. In fact, on my own setup(I own a small business as well) I have the DC on it's own computer, it's usually nothing fancy, with the only thing being special is a water cooled 5 setup. My experience with hard drives is keeping them cool makes them last longer, even if it's just a small computer fan blowing on them. This was learned painfully with the Gen1 WD Raptor drives lol.
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