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Say I am setting up the following environment:

-two physical servers each with Windows Server 2012 R2 Datacenter.

-a SAN

-a failover cluster between the two servers

The physical servers won't be running much. Probably just antivirus, the Failover Cluster, and the Hyper-V Role.

I want to set up several LUNs on the SAN, including one for user files, and one for my all my virtual machines. The virtual machines will probably run Windows Server 2012 as well, and include a domain controller/DNS, DHCP, and File and Print server.

Will this idea work? Can I have my VMs stored on the SAN, use them on Server 1, and have them load up on Server 2 automatically if Server 1 dies? If so, how do I go about setting this up? Do I have to create all VMs in Hyper-V on Server 1, and copy them all to Server 2?

paulb
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1 Answers1

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With Failover Clustering, each Hyper-V host would be connected to the same LUN. You would then create a Cluster Shared Volume from that LUN. The virtual hard disks for the virtual machines would "live" on the CSV and the virtual machines would "run" from one Hyper-V host or the other. In the event of a failure of one of the Hyper-V hosts, the virtual machines would be restarted on the other Hyper-V host. There's no copying of virtual machines from one host to the other.

Additionally, IMO you shouldn't create a LUN for user files. You should create a virtual file server and store your user data there and present it to your users via the virtual file server.

joeqwerty
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