I believe in Hyper-V!

Windows Server 2012 R2Category Archives

Hyper-V Cluster for the Lab – Part 2

Hi there,

In the last blog post I wrote how to prepare Hyper-V Cluster (Network, Storage Spaces, vDisks, CSV etc.). In this blog post I’ll explain how to move virtual machine storage and how to make virtual machine highly available.

The scenario is as follows;

I have one virtual machine on the local storage and now want to move virtual machine storage and all of the virtual machine data to a single location. In this case that will be on a CSV.

As you can see in the picture below VM and all her data files are on the local storage

1

Now I’ll move all that data files to another location C:\ClusterStorage\VMs
Right click on the virtual machine and choose Move and just follow the pictures below.

1

1
1
1
1 
1 

As you can see virtual machine is moved to another location and now it is ready to be highly available.

1

Open Failover Cluster Manager console and choose option Configure Role. Follow the steps below ;)

1 
1 
1

After a few moments virtual machine is highly available!

1
1

At the end we have clustered, highly available virtual machine.

1

This is all for today. Enjoy the day :)

Cheers,

Romeo

Romeo Mlinar
February 17, 2014
Hyper-V, Virtualization, Windows Server 2012 R2
3 comments

Hyper-V Cluster for the Lab – Part 1

In this blog post I’d like to explain how to configure Hyper-V Cluster using only Microsoft tools.
First off all I have to describe my hardware environment, one old PC with a bunch of disks (JBOD), two servers for clustered storage spaces and SOFS and two servers for the Hyper-V cluster. Every physical machine has four network adapters and Windows Server 2012 R2 installed. All servers are a domain members!

At the end lab environment will look like in the picture below
ToJeToSMB

After we prepared hardware let’s go to the software. On every server in the environment I created NIC Team and vSwitches. How to create NIC Team and vSwitches you can read here.

1

Now I need to configure the few major things and that’s Storage Pool, virtual disks (one for the Quorum and one for the Cluster Shared Volume on which will be virtual machines), iSCSI Target on a Storage side and iSCSI Initiators on the Hyper-V hosts side.

Storage Pool and Virtual disks (Storage Server)

I have one available disk ready and now I’ll be create storage space and two virtual disks from that pool.

1 1 1 1
We’re done with Storage Pool and we need to create Virtual Disks

1 
1

The first virtual disk will be for a Hyper-V Cluster Quorum

1 This virtual disk will be Simple, Thin and will be 5GB big. This is enough for Quorum disk.
1
After we are done with virtual disk creation need to create a volume!

1

1

Here is quorum disk configuration.

1

Now I’ll do another virtual disk for a Virtual Machines (Cluster Shared Volume)

1 

iSCSI Virtual Disk

On the storage server now we need to configure iSCSI Target (iSCSI Virtual Disk…) for a Hyper-V hosts on the both previously created disks.

1 2
Shift to the Hyper-V hosts and let’s configure iSCSI initiators. On the both (or on the all Hyper-V hosts) Hyper-V hosts under Server Manager console open iSCSI Initiator and connect to the storage server.

1
1

On the Hyper-V host open Disk Management to view disks!
1

The next steps are; Bring disks Online, Initialize Disk and Format Disk

1

Now we have everything what we need for a Cluster creation, network, storage and Hyper-V hosts. Let’s create cluster.
Open Failover Cluster Manager console and click on Create Cluster

1

Follow the steps below

1 
1 
1 1

At the end we have our Hyper-V Cluster created ;)

1

Don’t forget to do Cluster Validation after you are finished. If you have some warnings fix them and go ahead.

SMBclusterValidation

In the next blog post we will se how to configure disks, network, Virtual Machine Role (Configure Role) as well as how to create highly available virtual machines and lots of beautiful things such as Live Migration etc.

Cheers,

Romeo

Romeo Mlinar
February 10, 2014
Administration, Hyper-V, Microsoft, Windows Server 2012 R2
3 comments

Remove an iSCSI Target on Windows Server 2012 R2

In this blog post I’d like to explain how to remove old, unusable, inactive iSCSI Targets on Windows Server 2012 R2.
In one of my labs environment I created few iSCSI Targets and I don’t need them any more. So, I want to remove them.

NOTE: “When you remove a target, all initiators currently logged on to that target will no longer be able to access the LUNs that are assigned to that target. This action cannot be undone.”

Under Server Manager console expand File and Storage Services – iSCSI. At the bottom you will see iSCSI Targets tab. Click on TASKS (on the right hand side), you will see tab View all Targets.

1

All iSCSI, active and inactive will appear. As you can see in the picture below, I have only one active iSCSI Target and want to delete all inactive iSCSI Targets.

2

Only what need to do is to click on the iSCSI Target and then click Remove Target.

3
6

Now we have only a few iSCSI Targets to remove…
Unfortunately we can’t select all inactive iSCSI Targets and remove them in one click, we need to remove one by one.

At the end we have only active iSCSI Target as we should to have.

7

Enjoy the day and have a nice weekend!

Romeo

Romeo Mlinar
January 17, 2014
Administration, Hyper-V, Virtualization, Windows Server 2012 R2
3 comments