@stacksofplates said in I think I am missing something about Hyper-V....?:

@scottalanmiller said in I think I am missing something about Hyper-V....?:

@bnrstnr said in I think I am missing something about Hyper-V....?:

@scottalanmiller said in I think I am missing something about Hyper-V....?:

@bnrstnr said in I think I am missing something about Hyper-V....?:

My opinion is Hyper-V is only an option when you need vSAN, otherwise I’m just not buying it.

What makes it special in that case? AFAIK there is no production vSAN for Hyper-V that is unique to it. Hyper-V is effectively completely dependent on Starwind for vSAN and they recommend KVM most of the time.

Right, Starwind makes it a more viable solution because it’s free and easy and well documented, right?

No, Starwind does not. Starwind just doesn't discriminate against it. Starwind is just as easy on VMware or KVM. So it's a draw, unless you consider Xen, then it is just a negative for Xen.

Eh not really. They dropped support for the virtual appliance on anything other than VMware. So you have to manually do the work on KVM/Hyper-V or just aren't able to do it at all. I can't tell.

This one will be back soon. We'll have a GA for VMware VSA around next week and KVM will follow.

In general we shift our focus from "Hyper-V and VMware" to "VMware and KVM". Reason: Hyper-V doesn't grow anymore and KVM has very high chances to supersede it. VMware... There's just more money there :)

Thanks to everybody for your interest! One point so far... If you do like something about us - we're happy :) If you DON'T LIKE - please share. You have a great chance for your hate story to become a love story with a next release or so... Ping Max (he's StarWind VSAN Product Mgr) or me and trust me: I have a long (and full of nails) stick do deal with developers ;)))

@scottalanmiller said in Happy Birthday Thread:

@Minion-Queen said in Happy Birthday Thread:

how the crap did he get to be 19 already?

> Because 19 years have passed.

you made my day ;)

Thank you for this one! we're finalizing the things with our Linux-based ESXi, Xen and KVM appliances so far so no Windows install would be required ;)

@scottalanmiller said in CP - Dell vs HP server quotes:

@Kelly said in CP - Dell vs HP server quotes:

What is the point of duplicating the discussion here? I understand that there were some objections to the moderation approach, but since the OP is not part of the discussion, is this anything more than an academic exercise?

The OP said that he wanted and appreciated the broader information so the inability to have an open professional discussion where this originated requires either that the OP be left without the information that he feels is valid (this case) or is needed for completeness (many cases.) So in the interest of a professional level discussion (meaning as professionals we have obligations to honesty, transparency, growth, education, etc.) rather than a Q&A post (the storage and virtualization arenas on SW are not Q&A only like ServerFault) the discussion has to move elsewhere. The decision to remove the open discussion for storage and Virtualization topics on SW was confirmed with SW officially, so those topic groups have nowhere to have those discussions there, and people posting on SW think that they are posting for discussion and professional guidance, which is not allowed there. So even just in the interest of letting the OPs know that we still care and are still trying to help regardless of the mod's decisions to not allow that assistance in that community. Otherwise, it looks like those of us who want to help have abandoned that community, and it's important that posters on SW know that we are still around, still trying to help them.

And in many ways, this is better. Now SW can maintain the "here is the answer to what you asked, no need to dig deeper if you don't want your boss to see" or whatever. But if the OP wants a deep discussion into what they need, rather than what they asked, they can come here. It does make it easy for them to opt in, or opt out of the deeper discussion. Sadly, it leaves casual passers-by on SW not aware that there are potential issues, but casual readers on SW are caveat emptor as far as understanding that what they are seeing is intentionally filtered "advice."

A lot of good quality people (sorry if it sounds offensive but I hope you know what I mean) had indeed either left entirely or spend MUCH LESS time on a SpiceWorks these days. But i thin it's what happens to all the good forums all the time - people migrate from one to another and... It's a natural process :)

OK, there are good news and bad news.

Bad news: VTL is NOT included in the free version.

Good news: we'll add some LIMITED availability of it soon, just didn't;t decide on a restriction set.

Excellent news: I can give away to Tim_G an unlimited VTL license free of charge "just because" :) So he's welcomed to drop me a line to

anton AT starwind DOT com

...and I'll engage him with the responsible persons here to move on.

P.S. Just a link to VTL thing:

StarWind Virtual Tape Library (VTL)

https://www.starwindsoftware.com/virtual-tape-library-feature

@scottalanmiller said:

Ferraris and Tractor Trailers

Typically I don't give away advices if not asked but... @scottalanmiller you absolutely need somebody creating some pictures for your blog posts! They will be so much nicer and easier to understand! Just my $0.02 :)

I decided it worth providing a direct URL for the source...

StarWind Virtual SAN Free

https://www.starwindsoftware.com/starwind-virtual-san-free

:)

With cloud guys like Amazon offering their own WAN gateways (BTW, MSFT did virtual StorSimple recently) I don't see much of the future in WAN gateways and WAN accelerators. Seems to be built-in functionality of a hypervisor, backup, and could. IMHO.

Sorry I missed (messed up...) this one: Mom had a birthday so I had to attend the party :) Thanks to everybody who took part in AFA. Great thing BTW.

I don't know how Starwind vSAN can be run but if it's on a hypervisor it's severely limited by I/O congestion through the kernel. NVMe drives is causing problems that was of no concern whatsoever with spinners. Both KVM and Xen has made a lot of work to limit their I/O latency and use polling techniques now but it's still a problem. That's why you really need SR-IOV on NVMe drives so any VM can bypass the hypervisor and just have it's own kernel to slow things down.

Anton: There are no problems with polling these days :) You normally spawn a SPDK-enabled VM (Linux is unbeatable here as most of the new gen I/O development happens there) and pass thru RDMA-capable network hardware (virtual function with SR-IOV or whole card with PCIe pass-thru, this is really irrelevant...) and NMVe drives and... magic starts happening :) This is how our NVMe-oF target works on ESXi & Hyper-V (KVM & Xen have no benefits here architecturally, this is where you're either wrong or I failed to get your arguments). It's possible to port SPDK into Windows user-mode but lack of NVMe and NIC polling drivers takes away all the fun: to move the same amount of data we normally use ~4x more CPU horsepower on "Pure Windows" Vs. "Linux-SPDK-VM-on-Windows" models. Microsoft is trying to bring SPDK to Windows kernel (so does VMware from what I know), but it needs a lot of work from NIC and NVMe engineers and... nobody wants to contribute. Really.

Just my $0.02 :)

@pmoncho said in I think I am missing something about Hyper-V....?:

@kooler said in I think I am missing something about Hyper-V....?:

In general we shift our focus from "Hyper-V and VMware" to "VMware and KVM". Reason: Hyper-V doesn't grow anymore and KVM has very high chances to supersede it. VMware... There's just more money there :)

Could you expand on your statement about Hyper-V not growing? Thanks

% between VMware, ESXi and KVM for acquired number of customers doesn't look good for Microsoft.

@stacksofplates said in I think I am missing something about Hyper-V....?:

@scottalanmiller said in I think I am missing something about Hyper-V....?:

@bnrstnr said in I think I am missing something about Hyper-V....?:

@scottalanmiller said in I think I am missing something about Hyper-V....?:

@bnrstnr said in I think I am missing something about Hyper-V....?:

My opinion is Hyper-V is only an option when you need vSAN, otherwise I’m just not buying it.

What makes it special in that case? AFAIK there is no production vSAN for Hyper-V that is unique to it. Hyper-V is effectively completely dependent on Starwind for vSAN and they recommend KVM most of the time.

Right, Starwind makes it a more viable solution because it’s free and easy and well documented, right?

No, Starwind does not. Starwind just doesn't discriminate against it. Starwind is just as easy on VMware or KVM. So it's a draw, unless you consider Xen, then it is just a negative for Xen.

Eh not really. They dropped support for the virtual appliance on anything other than VMware. So you have to manually do the work on KVM/Hyper-V or just aren't able to do it at all. I can't tell.

This one will be back soon. We'll have a GA for VMware VSA around next week and KVM will follow.

In general we shift our focus from "Hyper-V and VMware" to "VMware and KVM". Reason: Hyper-V doesn't grow anymore and KVM has very high chances to supersede it. VMware... There's just more money there :)

@scottalanmiller said in Hyper-V replication, Starwind, or something else?:

@doyler3000 said in Hyper-V replication, Starwind, or something else?:

Oh and I've already got Veeam backup and replication (a 30 vm license) which gives me good agentless backup options for Hyper-V. 5-nine manager or something like it would likely be required as well.

5-Nine would be "extra" stuff only needed because Hyper-V doesn't have the native options that it provides. Another reason for KVM.

Veeam is great, but they have agent based for your scenario. We have another thread right now talking about this, but why do you see agentless as even something you want, let alone a driving factor in decision making? It sounds nice, but is very rarely (especially in such a large, diverse shop) viable.

Well, Microsoft released WAC (Windows Admin Center, ex- "Project Honolulu") to fill lack of management gap, but... I'm very pessimistic about WAC so far: too many compatibility issues and no single scenario is covered from Day Zero till the very end. Bottom line: You'll have to learn PowerShell and Windows Server management cmdlets.

@scottalanmiller said in Hyper-V replication, Starwind, or something else?:

@doyler3000 said in Hyper-V replication, Starwind, or something else?:

Out of roughly 30 VMs, 2 are Windows server instances. We're mostly running Centos here.
I'll look into SA licensing. I'm not very familiar with it.

Given that skill set, why look at Hyper-V instead of KVM? Both have been officially dropped from Starwind support temporarily until their new product roles out, which is KVM first, that's their key focus as they see it as the one with the greater future and potential. Hyper-V in general is more complex to manage than KVM. It's a fine product, but given your skill set and existing products, KVM seems like a more natural fit. Generally, Hyper-V makes sense only when you require a specific feature of it.

I'd tend to agree here, KVM running Linux VMs sounds like a better choice. Hyper-V makes sense if it's a "free" offering comping as part of already paid Windows Server licenses.

P.S. Not sure about VM backup with KVM.

@kuyaz said in 2 RAID 1 or 1 RAID 10 for VM Server Host:

Hi,

I have server with 2 x 1 TB SSD and 2 x 2 TB SATA.

I want to use this server as VM host.
My questions are :

1. Can I do RAID 1 for each SSD and SATA?
2. Can Raid 10 do different size and model (1TB SSD & 2TB SATA)?
3. What is the best RAID configuration for above use?
4. Should I go hardware RAID? or MDADM? I heard hardware is slower for SSD RAID?
5. What filesystem I should use on the host? ext4 or LVM? or other?
6. If I use CentOS 7, do you recommend XEN / VM for stability and user friendly system?

My aim is to get full speed with SSD for critical VM (database server VM guest, web apps, etc) and less critical VM on sata (mail server VM guest, etc).

Thank you.

Don't mix different types of the drives with different performance inside the same pool: you'll limit your resulting performance with the slowest (in your content - HDD).

@r3dpand4 said in Configuring Multi-Resilient Volume with Storage Spaces:

Should be noted that any server running 1709 cannot be added to S2D pools as it stands currently since it's not considered production ready....

Correct. S2D is gone from non-GA WS2016.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/get-started/server-1709-relnotes

Storage Spaces Direct

Storage Spaces Direct is not included in Windows Server, version 1709. If you call Enable-ClusterStorageSpacesDirect or its alias Enable-ClusterS2D, on a server running Windows Server, version 1709, you will receive an error with the message "The requested operation is not supported". It is also not supported to introduce servers running Windows Server, version 1709 into a Windows Server 2016 Storage Spaces Direct deployment.

@momurda said in Microsoft Removes Storage Spaces Direct from Windows Server 2016:

You will have to buy Windows Super Server Edition 2016 to get this functionality. At twice the price.
Seriously, that blurb says that MS is 'thrilled' about adoption of Storage Spaces Direct

"Storage Spaces Direct was introduced in Windows Server 2016 and is the foundation for our hyper-converged platform. We have been thrilled by the positive adoption of the Microsoft hyper-converged platform and we are committed to our customers."

so why take it away?

Don't listen to anything people say, watch what they DO.

@tim_g said in Microsoft Removes Storage Spaces Direct from Windows Server 2016:

You can still deploy systems with S2D by using RS1, and is still supported as in LTS.

It looks like they will be adding S2D back in, though. Just not yet (until it's production ready?).

You can't upgrade anyways, so if you don't already use S2D, it doesn't effect you. If you want to use S2D, you can still deploy systems with S2D by using Server 2016 LTS (RS1), and is still supported.

> It looks like they are moving S2D to a different product/SKU from what the comments say... It's hard to know what they are up to without being in their circle like @KOOLER is.

You have any info you're allowed to share regarding this to clear things up?

Unfortunately I won't be a valuable source of information here - I don't know about their plans :(

Forget about 15K spinners. For consumer-grade SSDs make sure your SDS of choice is OK with them (StarWind is OK, VMware vSAN / S2D are NOT OK f.e.)

https://fojta.wordpress.com/2014/01/12/monitor-wear-and-tear-of-your-vsan-ssds/

https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/filecab/2016/11/18/dont-do-it-consumer-ssd/

https://www.starwindsoftware.com/starwind-virtual-san