Hyper V and SMB 3.0

Hello everyone, its been kind of hectic now i am finally able to write a quick post. Today i just quick wanted to touch base on Windows Server 2012 R2 Hyper V and Scale out file servers. I think one of the new great improvements of the windows visualization hyper visor is the ability to cluster hosts with SMB 3.0. You might ask yourself why in the world would you want to host VMs on a file server, but don't be fooled about this new SMB 3.0 . it is quite something. With 3.0 you get many new features that give you the ability to provide a cheaper and more cost effective solutions without having to spend thousands on a high performance SAN. Below is some of the new features of SMB 3.0

1. Transparent Failover - similar to iSCSI mutlipath
2. SMB Multichannel - Bandwidth aggregation and multiple NICs support
3. SMB Directory Leasing - intelligent cache shorter client/server round trip
4. SMB Encryption - Traffic is encrypted

We all know when it comes to providing solutions for clients storage is one of the biggest cost factors, this new technology will definitely ease that pain, don't forget though, that continued support for traditional SAN and NAS storage technologies are still supported.

I think the most intriguing thing here is that you can have a couple of traditional servers with a greater amount of local storage and multiple NICs and  pool them together and have a high performance, redundant cluster. I think by taking the cost out in having to purchase high end SANs, setting up and configuring your back-planes you end up on top.



One more thing to make a note of is physical disk and JBOD enclosures. with 2012 R2 you can get the same top level SAS SSD and HDD that are typically used in expensive NAS and SAN devices. Speed for the SAS devices run up to 6GB per second and to make the disks accessible to your Windows Server 2012 R2 cluster you put them in a Scale out File Services cluster, the physical disks would be put in 1 or multiple SAS JBOD enclosure. JBOD meaning Just a bunch of Disks. The enclosures provide a SAS backplane which is your physical connection point to multiple servers via HBAs. The below webstite provides JBOD devices, see link below.

http://www.dataonstorage.com/dataon-products/6g-sas-jbod/dns-1640-2u-24-bay-6g-25inch-sassata-jbod.html