I am trying to build a Hyper-V cluster with VMM 2012 R2 but require some advice as it is not working how I want it too.

I have 2 Hyper-V servers, both with their own local storage and 1 iSCSI disk shared between them. I am trying to cluster the servers so that the shared iSCSI disk becomes a shared volume while maintaining the ability to use the local storage as well - some VMs will run from local storage while others will run from the CSV.

The issue I'm having is that when I cluster the 2 servers the iSCSI disk does not show up in VMM as a shared volume. In Windows Explorer the disk has the cluster icon but in VMM there is nothing. In the cluster properties I can add a shared volume... but it asks for a logical node which I cannot create because I have no storage pools (server manager says no groups of disks are available to pool).

I also noticed when I clustered the servers my 2 file shares to their local storage disappeared from VMM which isn't what I want.

Can someone please advise, or link to, a way to achieve my desired configur

Try to add disk through failover cluster manager, once you add the disk and it's available storage make it a csv.

The shared disk was visible in failover cluster manager; but there was no option to convert to csv. I suspect because it was also acting as the quorum. I've created a new 1GB LUN and mapped with iSCSI to take on the disk witness role so I'll see if that makes a difference.

I think what I'm wanting is a scale-out file cluster more so than a Hyper-V cluster given I only want shared storage. I'm going to play around with creating one of those.

Correct, the witness disk cannot be used for any other purpose than the witness disk.  If you want to have a shared data disk, you need to add that in addition to the witness disk.

Hi MrGoodBytes,

Hi,

Unfortunately, the available information is not enough to have a clear view of the occurred behavior. Could you provide more information about your environment. For example, the server version of the problem on, when this problem occurs the system log record information, screenshots is the best information.

Before you create the cluster we strongly recommend you run the cluster validation, If you are considering the cluster may have some issue please rerun the validation, then post the validation report warning and error part information, this report will quickly locate the cluster potential issue.

A disk witness is a disk in the cluster storage that is designated to hold a copy of the cluster configuration database. A failover cluster has a disk witness only if this is specified as part of the quorum configuration.

Configure and Manage the Quorum in a Windows Server 2012 Failover Cluster

http://technet.microsoft.com/zh-cn/library/jj612870.aspx

I am not familiar with SVCMM so please refer the following related KB to confirm your shared storage add steps is correct.

How to Configure Storage on a Hyper-V Host Cluster in VMM

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg610692.aspx

Configuring Storage in VMM

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg610600.aspx

More information:

How to add storage to Clustered Shared Volumes in Windows Server 2012

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/clustering/archive/2012/04/06/10291490.aspx

Configure and Manage the Quorum in a Windows Server 2012 Failover Cluster

http://technet.microsoft.com/zh-cn/library/jj612870.aspx

Event Logs

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc722404.aspx

Im glad to be of help to you!

So after some fiddling I managed to cluster both Hyper-V Hosts (Windows Server 2012 R2) and add the file server role - hosting a Cluster Shared Volume.

Yay I now have shared storage between both hosts... however, now there's a slight issue with SCVMM 2012 R2.

Each Hyper-V Server has local storage in addition to the CSV which is shared using the "VMShare" name:

\\HyperV-01\VMShare

\\HyperV-02\VMShare

Both these servers are in the file cluster HyperVCluster01. This cluster has a share in the CSV:

\\HyperVCluster01\VMShare

In SCVMM, I'd expect to see all 3 file servers and shares in Fabric>Storage>File Servers, but I only see 2 - the scale out file server and a Hyper-V server.

Changing the file server role owner to the other node in the cluster does not change which displays in SCVMM.

When I try to re-add the missing Hyper-V host as a storage device by name, it only detects the cluster. When I add via IP it says it already exists.

Can anyone advise how to force SCVMM to show my missing Hyper-V host?