This is yet another question for a newbie to clustering but in all the reading, I can't seem to find a good answer. I do not want to get too detailed in the "how stuff works" discussion on clustering, but this is a real simple question. So, I am virtualizing a small amount of servers (15-20) but want the benefits of HA from failover clustering, Scale-Out-Fileservers and CSV. I am confused by a couple things though.
I am finding out SOFS, failover clustering etc. will only support a more expensive method of SAS usage whether it's using a JBOD enclosure or not so that takes away the "less expensive" way of using SATA drives. Please do not reply saying why SATA is not recommended, I get this. So, I have two Dell T610 servers with an integrated PERC 6/I RAID controller. If I stack this full of SAS drives, shouldn't this work? I see posts saying if you use a RAID controller. put it in pass-through mode but I see no way of doing this so generally if you create a virtual disk, it states the bus type is RAID and then not acceptable to the Windows failover cluster manager for adding disks. If using locally attached SAS drives will not work, this would require taking two servers and using a JBOD enclosure attached to both file servers, now you have a single point of failure again and a much more expensive method of using what is being touted as a "cheap" method of replacing a traditional SAN!
Another things is, why can't a failover cluster accept RAID bus type when selecting disks? If I take a server and RAID10 a bunch of drives, why would the failover cluster manager see and add these disks? The server will not allow me to pass the disks through to the OS.
Although this may be against all best practices as it imposes a single point of failure, but, is it possible to create a single node scaled-out-fileserver with the SMB3.02 protocol and use this server as a shared storage for 2 or more Hyper-V hosts? I really want shared storage but just cannot seem to find a solution that does not require a very complex setup for a smaller implementation.
Another thing I question is, and maybe this is more a Hyper-V question but, VMware supports a Virtual SAN feature which allows hosts with local storage to group these together and use it for shared storage so no separate box is required. Any plans for this in Hyper-V?? (I know this is not a Hyper-V forum)