Hyper-V and attaching physical disks

Posted by Mike Christiansen on Super User See other posts from Super User or by Mike Christiansen
Published on 2011-11-12T16:17:56Z Indexed on 2011/11/12 17:55 UTC
Read the original article Hit count: 224

Filed under:

hyper-v

|

hard-drive

So, I'm looking at rebuilding my home server. My current setup is the following

Windows 7 Ultimate
1TB Boot Drive (my smallest drive)
Windows Dynamic Spanned volume, continaing 1x 1TB drive, 2x 2TB drives, totalling 5TB.

I am upgrading to a hardware RAID controller, and I would like to run Hyper-V server core. However, I want to retain the ability to join my "file server" to a homegroup, so I must use Windows 7. I know VHDs can only be like 127GB or something, so I obviously need to directly connect disks to my Windows 7 machine. Here is my plan:

Server Core 2008 R2 (Hyper-V)
1TB Boot Drive (storing VHDs for boot drives of VMs) - possibly in a RAID 1 with my other 1TB drive
5x 2TB drives (1x 2TB drive hot spare), totalling 10TB, directly attached to a Windows 7 VM, for use of homegroup for this array.

In the past, I directly attached the windows dynamic volume to a Windows 7 VM, and performance was abysmal. The question is, with hardware RAID, will it really make that much of a difference?

Server specs:

Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 2.83GHz
Asus Maximus II Formula (PCI-E x16)
8GB DDR2 RAM PC2-6400

(Yes, I know its a bit out of date)

© Super User or respective owner

Related posts about hyper-v

HyperV on Domain Controller or DC on HyperV?

as seen on Server Fault - Search for 'Server Fault'
I want to setup a little fileserver/domain controller/sharepoint server. SharePoint shouldn't run on the DC directly, so I want to use HyperV. But I never used it before, so I wonder: Should I install the Domain Controller and HyperV Role and run 1 VM for SharePoint? Or should I run HyperV server… >>> More
Hyper-V and Hyper-threading: On or off?

as seen on Server Fault - Search for 'Server Fault'
Hey all, With the new Xeon CPUs supporting Hyper-threading, what is the current wisdom with regard to using it (or not) on a Hyper-V host machine? I was originally under the impression that turning it on in a virtual host environment could be detrimental as the 'extra' CPUs were not true cores.… >>> More
Migration of VM from Hyper-V to Hyper-V R2 - Pass through disks

as seen on Server Fault - Search for 'Server Fault'
I am trying to migrate a VM which is using two pass through disks from a legacy Hyper-V Cluster to a new R2 cluster. The migrated VM cannot use the pass through disks though. The guest OS (2008 R2) doesn't seem to like the disk and eventually tries to format the disk instead of mounting it. The… >>> More
Comparison of Hyper-V, Hyper-V Server, VMware ESXi, Xen and Parallels Bare Metal (Community Wiki)

as seen on Server Fault - Search for 'Server Fault'
Can we use this question to collect information and the pros and cons of each of the above products? Specifically I am wondering whethere there is any sane reason to use Hyper-V (the role built into Windows Server) over Hyper-V server (the stand-alone product based on the same technology) and what… >>> More
Hyper-V Deployment Options Best Practices

as seen on Server Fault - Search for 'Server Fault'
In what circumstances would you choose each of the following deployment options: Hyper-V installed as the bare bones Windows Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V role installed on a Windows Server 2008 R2 Server Core installation Hyper-V role installed on a Windows Server 2008 R2 Full Installation For… >>> More

Related posts about hard-drive

Move smaller hard drive to partition on a larger hard drive

as seen on Super User - Search for 'Super User'
My parents bought a new hard drive for a laptop that I've owned for several years. It's much larger than the current one, so I plan on splitting it up to dual boot it with Ubuntu. I have no problem with partitioning a drive (I always keep a LiveCD handy), but my question is this: how can I go about… >>> More
Copy the contents of one hard drive partition to anohter hard drive partition

as seen on Super User - Search for 'Super User'
I have made a C++ program which can copy the whole hardrive partition to another hardrive partition, but now I am looking forward for the program which can only copy the contents of one hardrive partiton to another hardrive partition. >>> More
Using an ATA-100 Hard Drive with a Thermaltake BlacX External Hard Drive Dock

as seen on Super User - Search for 'Super User'
Is it possible for a Thermaltake BlacX HDD Dock to connect to and recognize an ATA-100 Hard Drive? I know that the specifications for the BlacX say that it only supports SATA & SATAII, but I was hoping for one of three things: 1) for it to still work even though it isn't supported 2) for there… >>> More
backup hard drive image on external hard drive for Windows 7

as seen on Super User - Search for 'Super User'
Hello, I am looking for a backup tool for Windows 7, that will allow me to backup my laptop’s hard drive on an external hard drive as an exact image. In a case of a problem with the main hard drive, I would like just to swap the drives and to continue to work using the backup hard drive. Thanks >>> More
Copy the contents of one hard drive partition to anohter hard drive partition

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I have made a C++ program which can copy the whole hardrive partition to another hardrive partition, but now I am looking forward for the program which can only copy the contents of one hardrive partiton to another hardrive partition. >>> More