Windows Server 2012 R2 Hyper-V: Designing for the Real World

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Windows Server 2012 R2 Hyper-V:

Designing for the Real World

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Legacy Network Configuration

(Server 2008 R2)

Management

Hyper-V Host

vNIC vNIC vNIC

VM Cluster

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Problems with Legacy Network Configuration

Management

Hyper-V Host

vNIC vNIC vNIC

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Server 2012 Introduces Converged Fabric

10Gb 10Gb 10Gb 10Gb

Hyper-V Host

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Benefits of Converged Fabric

10G 10G 10G 10G

Hyper-V Host

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Wait! Where’s my 40Gbps of bandwidth?!?!?

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NIC Teaming: LACP (Switch Dependent) & Address Hashing

10G 10G 10G 10G

Hyper-V Host

vNIC vNIC vNIC _vNIC _vNIC _vNIC

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NIC Teaming: Switch Independent & Hyper-V Port Load Balancing

10G 10G 10G 10G

Hyper-V Host

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NIC Teaming: Server 2012 R2 Switch Independent & Dynamic Load

Balancing

10G 10G 10G 10G

Hyper-V Host

vNIC vNIC vNIC _vNIC _vNIC _vNIC

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Converged Fabric Diagram

10Gb 10Gb 10Gb 10Gb

Hyper-V Host

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QoS – Three ways to create rules

Hyper-V Host

vNIC vNIC

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What is the difference?

• QoS Enabled Virtual Switch

• Very simple, especially when using converged fabrics (all interfaces are vNICs). • Each rule is applied to a virtual NIC (VM or Management OS).

• You can define a default bucket for unspecified.

• QoS Packet Scheduler

• Used for creating per protocol rules handled by the Management OS.

• Data Center Bridging (DCB)

• DCB is handled by hardware.

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QoS Packet Scheduler Built in Filters

Workload Built-in Filter (PowerShell

Parameter)

Filter Implementation

iSCSI -iSCSI Match TCP or UDP port 3260

NFS -NFS Match TCP or UDP port 2049

SMB -SMB Match TCP or UDP port 445

Live Migration -LiveMigration Match TCP port 660 Wild Card -Default Any traffic that is not

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Hyper-V QoS (Virtual Switch) > Omit this

slide! – I will just talk about it

• Guarantee a minimum level of service to a vNIC, protocol, or an IP port

• Bits per second-based rules – Gives exact speed but what if VMs are

moved to host with different speed NICs?

• Weight-based rules – More flexible as its based on a share of bandwidth

with no consideration of actual speed

• Minimum Bandwidth – Guarantee a minimum share of the host’s

bandwidth to a vNIC or protocol

• Maximum Bandwidth – Limit the bandwidth consumption of a vNIC or

protocol

• The most flexible and common option is to implement

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QoS – Guaranteeing a % of Bandwidth

Unspecified 35 % Cluster 40% Management 5% Live Migration 20%

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QoS – Example Configuration

# Apply a default weight to the vSwitch (any vNIC which is unspecified will fall into this bucket)

Set-VMSwitch “Converged-vSwitch” -DefaultFlowMinimumBandwidthWeight 35

# Assign a weight to Management OS vNICs

SetVMNetworkAdapter ManagementOS Name "Cluster" -MinimumBandwidthWeight 40

SetVMNetworkAdapter ManagementOS Name "LiveMigration" -MinimumBandwidthWeight 20

SetVMNetworkAdapter ManagementOS Name "Management" -MinimumBandwidthWeight 5

# Calculate the percentage of bandwidth based on your specified weights

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iSCSI within the Converged Fabric

10G 10G

Hyper-V Host

vNIC vNIC vNIC vNIC vNIC

Storage Controller B

10G 10G

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Converged Fabric / iSCSI Fault Domains

10G 10G

Hyper-V Host

vNIC vNIC vNIC vNIC

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Testing Fabric

• Test throughput

• Use consume.exe to consume the memory on a VM with 64GB of ram > Then Live Migrate the VM!

• Use iPerf to test the throughput from vNIC to vNIC

• Notice the throughput difference on a Live Migration when Jumbo Frames are not configured • Use Jumbo Frames!

• Test disk throughput with SQL-IO

• Verify you have Jumbo Frames configured end to end

• ping –l 8000 –f 192.168.1.50

• Failing Components

• Network interfaces • Switches

• Storage connectivity

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Real World Testing Example with SQLIO

Unbalanced iSCSI Interface utilization

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Cluster Shared Volumes v1 (WS 2008 R2)

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Cluster Shared Volumes v2 (WS 2012)

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CSV Cache

• Uses system memory

• Up to 20% in Windows Server 2012 • Up to 80% in Windows Server 2012 R2

• Improves Read Performance

• VDI Environment

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Failov

er Clu

st

er

SMB3

Software Defined Storage

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Block Level Disk for VMs – Guest iSCSI

10G 10G

Hyper-V Host

vNIC vNIC vNIC

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Dynamic Quorum – Windows Server 2012

Requirements

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Cluster Size

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Cluster Size

Rack #1 Rack #2 1 node = 100gb RAM & 10 Cores

8 node cluster

- 2 redundant nodes 6 nodes

6 nodes x 96gb RAM = 576gb RAM 6 nodes x 10 Cores = 60 cores

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Cluster Size

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Hotfixes

• 2 very useful TechNet Wiki pages for checking Hyper-V related

updates:

• Hyper-V: Update List for Windows Server 2012

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System Resource

Maximum number

Improvement factor

Windows 2008 R2 Windows Server 2012

Host

Logical processors on hardware 64 320 _5× Physical memory 1 terabyte 4 terabytes _4× Virtual processors per host 512 1,024 _2×

Virtual machine

Virtual processors per virtual machine 4 64 _16× Memory per virtual machine 64 GB 1 terabyte _16× Active virtual machines 384 1,024 _2.7× Virtual disk size 2 terabytes 64 terabytes _32× Cluster

Nodes 16 64 _4×

Virtual machines 1,000 4,000 _4×

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SOFS.techdays.com

Shared Nothing Live Migration – Constrained Delegation

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WS 2012 R2 – Hyper-V Enhancements

• Live Migration • Compressed • Cross-Version • SMB Capable

• Linux Support Improvements

• Dynamic Memory • Online backup

• Supports Kdump/kexec

• Automatic Guest Activation

• Built-in NVGRE Gateway • Dynamic Mode NIC Teaming • Enhanced Session Mode

• Your clipboard will work!!

• Live resizing of VHDX!!!

• Live Virtual Machine Cloning • Shared VHDX

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Summary

• Pay attention to network design

• Think through failure points

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