Today's Best Practice to Setup 2 Hyper-V Host Servers and MSA

[Dev2022]

Hi,

I'm looking to refesh my current servers and MSA with two new HPE DL380 servers and MSA 2062 (Dual Controller).

Details:

• VMs (Total of 10) will be stored on the MSA running SSD drives
• 20TB of Data will be stored on the MSA running 10k SAS drives
• Each Hyper-V Host server will have 5 VMs assigned to them
• MSA will be direct-attach to the new servers using SAS-3 or Fibre Channel

My cuurent servers and MSA are setup using pass-through disk, but I know that is not recommended anymore.

What is today's best practice and recommendation to configure these equipment's?

[support_s]

System recommended content:

1. HPE MSA 1060/2060/2062 Storage Arrays Best Practices

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[SahanaR]

Hello Dev,

Also please consider staying on the latest firmware on MSA 2060 ,which is 
IN110P001.

I believe this is an FC controllers.Also the supported windows OS version with 2060 are windows 2016,2019 and 2022.

HPE MSA Gen6 Storage with Microsoft Hyper-V Implementation Guide

https://www.hpe.com/psnow/doc/a00119216enw

Also follow this guide.

I hope this was helpful!

Have a good day.

[Dev2022]

@SahanaR 

I've read the best practice guides. Thank you!

I've read the Scope section, but it doesn't state using Direct-Attach cables. Unfortunatly, I do not have a compatible NPIV-compatible switch - see below in bold.

Scope:

This paper does not explore all of the supported options that are available for the HPE MSA platform and is only scoped to cover best practices. For example, the HPE MSA Gen6 supports Direct Attached Fibre Channel, but by doing so you are more limited on the features support as features such as NPIV (required for Virtual FC Adaptors) are not available unless via a connected NPIV-compatible switch. Additionally, without iSCSI or Fibre Channel Switches the process of expanding a Windows Failover Cluster to support additional nodes will be limited or require a service interruption reconfiguration. This paper illustrates only the most common architecture and does not cover all supported configurations or architectures.

What are my options using Direct-Attach SAS-3 or Fibre Channel cables connecting directly from the MSA to the 2 new servers?

[ArunKKR]

Hi,

If NPIV feature is not a requirement you should be able to use direct connect fibre channel configuration.

SSD disks could be used to create Pool A to host vms.

SAS 10K rpm drives could be used to create Pool B.

Ensure that power of 2 recommendation is being followed while creating SAS disk group in Pool B, if you opt for either RAID 5/6.

Refer pages 12 and 13 of best practices guide.