Converged Fabric without Storage Traffic

I have a DataOn 9220 CiB. 2 nodes, each with a dual-port 10gb nic going to a single 10g switch. They also have a 1g nic connected internally directly to eachother. Storage is via direct SAS connection to internal dual-port drives, setup as CSVs. I'm not creating a SoFS. These two nodes have tons of RAM and will be the Hyper-V compute nodes, accessing the SAS drives directly.

What's the best way to setup my converged network fabric, considering I don't have any storage traffic on it?

I've been playing with some configs. Mostly teaming the two ports on the dual port 10g nic in dynamic switch independant mode. Then creating vlans for mangement and live migration. What am I missing, and what should the QoS settings on each vlan be? How could I best leverage the 1g node-to-node internal connection?

(I'll eventually have another 10g switch for redundancy) Thanks.

February 5th, 2014 11:33am

If this is truly set up as a CiB, then you will need additional servers to serve as your Hyper-V hosts.  You cannot cluster Hyper-V hosts if those same hosts are working as a cluster for shared storage.  Unless the storage is really not clustered with Microsoft Failover Clustering.  If DataOn is using some sort of proprietary mirroring technology, then it would be possible because the Hyper-V nodes would see it as 'external shared' storage.

As for networking, http://blogs.technet.com/b/askpfeplat/archive/2013/03/10/windows-server-2012-hyper-v-best-practices-in-easy-checklist-form.aspx contains a lot of good information about how to ensure a good setup for Hyper-V, including which networks you should have (at a minimum).  In the end, your specific requirements are going to determine which networks are needed, but there is a set that is considered minimum.

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=40319 is a document you should read about Microsoft NIC teaming.  It will show you how to create multiple team NICs from the pairing of your 10GE NICs.

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February 5th, 2014 6:06pm

Great links, thanks. And thank you for helping.

Maybe I'm confusing things a bit. Maybe I can explain it better without thinking of it as a cluster in a box.

Effectively, what I have is two 1U servers running 2012R2, each with lots of ram, dual port 10gig-t connected to a 10gig-t switch, a single port 1gig nic directly connected between each other, and their own raid1 boot drive. They also each have an internal SAS card and are directly attached to one of two SAS ports on a two-port JBOD. The drives in the JBOD are dual-ported.

I'm never going to add more compute or more storage, and the two 1U servers are each capable of running all guests in the cluster.

February 5th, 2014 6:20pm

Great links, thanks. And thank you for helping.

Maybe I'm confusing things a bit. Maybe I can explain it better without thinking of it as a cluster in a box.

Effectively, what I have is two 1U servers running 2012R2, each with lots of ram, dual port 10gig-t connected to a 10gig-t switch, a single port 1gig nic directly connected between each other, and their own raid1 boot drive. They also each have an internal SAS card and are directly attached to one of two SAS ports on a two-port JBOD. The drives in the JBOD are dual-ported.

I'm never going to add more compute or more storage, and the two 1U servers are each capable of running all guests in the cluster.

If you configure Clustered Storage Spaces (and eventually a CSV on top of it to keep your VMs there) with your SAS drives and shared back pane you're not going to see any storage traffic over you Ethernet connections. 
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February 5th, 2014 6:27pm

If you configure Clustered Storage Spaces (and eventually a CSV on top of it to keep your VMs there) with your SAS drives and shared back pane you're not going to see any storage traffic over you Ethernet connections. 

Right!  Is there any documentation on how best to configure Clustered Storage Spaces, CSVs, AND the best way to setup a converged network fabric, considering that no storage traffic will flow over it?
February 5th, 2014 6:36pm

If you configure Clustered Storage Spaces (and eventually a CSV on top of it to keep your VMs there) with your SAS drives and shared back pane you're not going to see any storage traffic over you Ethernet connections. 

Right!  Is there any documentation on how best to configure Clustered Storage Spaces, CSVs, AND the best way to setup a converged network fabric, considering that no storage traffic will flow over it?

Sure!

Storage Spaces, JBODs, and Failover Clustering A Recipe for Cost-Effective, Highly Available Storage

http://blogs.technet.com/b/storageserver/archive/2013/10/19/storage-spaces-jbods-and-failover-clustering-a-recipe-for-cost-effective-highly-available-storage.aspx

Deploy Clustered Storage Spaces

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj822937.aspx

How to Configure a Clustered Storage Space in Windows Server 2012

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/clustering/archive/2012/06/02/10314262.aspx

Cluster Shared Volumes Support for Hyper-V

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd630633(v=ws.10).aspx

Overview of Cluster Shared Volumes (CSV) in Windows Server 2012

http://mountainss.wordpress.com/2012/08/30/overview-of-cluster-shared-volumes-csv-in-windows-server-2012-ws2012-hyperv/

Follow me and learn Windows Server 2012 Clustered Shared Volumes

http://blogs.technet.com/b/bruce_adamczak/archive/2012/11/01/follow-me-and-learn-windows-server-2012-clustered-shared-volumes.aspx

Hope this helped :)

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February 6th, 2014 5:31am

So, I'm trying to create my network from the first node by mostly following (no iscsi traffic, so no adapters for that) an example in "Microsoft Hyper-V Cluster Design" book by Eric Siron - but I'm running into a problem.

# Create a team on the physical adapters.
New-NetLbfoTeam -Name "vSwitchTeam" -TeamMembers "10G P1", "10G P2" -TeamingMode SwitchIndependent -LoadBalancingAlgorithm Dynamic

# Create a virtual switch and enable relative weight QoS. Do not create a virtual adapter now.
New-VMSwitch -Name "vSwitch" -NetAdapterName "vSwitchTeam" -MinimumBandwidthMode Weight -AllowManagementOS $false

# Create virtual adapters for all management operating system roles
Add-VMNetworkAdapter -Name "Management" -SwitchName "vSwitch" -ManagementOS
Add-VMNetworkAdapter -Name "ClusterComm" -SwitchName "vSwitch" -ManagementOS
Add-VMNetworkAdapter -Name "LiveMigration" -SwitchName "vSwitch" -ManagementOS

# Assign virtual adapters to VLANs
Set-VMNetworkAdapterVlan -VMNetworkAdapter "Management" -Access -VlanId 505 -ManagementOS
Set-VMNetworkAdapterVlan -VMNetworkAdapter "ClusterComm" -Access -VlanId 510 -ManagementOS
Set-VMNetworkAdapterVlan -VMNetworkAdapter "LiveMigration" -Access -VlanId 515 -ManagementOS

When I try to assign the virtual adapters to VLANs, I get a powershell error:

Set-VMNetworkAdapterVlan : Cannot bind parameter 'VMNetworkAdapter'. Cannot convert the "Management" value of type
"System.String" to type "Microsoft.HyperV.PowerShell.VMNetworkAdapterBase".
At line:1 char:44
+ Set-VMNetworkAdapterVlan -VMNetworkAdapter "Management" -Access -VlanId 505 -Man ...
+                                            ~~~~~~~~~~~~
    + CategoryInfo          : InvalidArgument: (:) [Set-VMNetworkAdapterVlan], ParameterBindingException
    + FullyQualifiedErrorId : CannotConvertArgumentNoMessage,Microsoft.HyperV.PowerShell.Commands.SetVMNetworkAdapterV
   lanCommand
Even though that's the correct adapter name.

February 7th, 2014 1:06am

Hi gmbrown,

This command " Set-VMNetworkAdapterVlan -VMNetworkAdapter "Management" -Access -VlanId 505 -ManagementOS " .

The parameter " -VMNetworkAdapter "Management" " should be "-VMNetworkAdaptername "Management""

Try again please .

Best Regards

Elton Ji

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February 8th, 2014 10:17pm

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