I have been trying to nail down the proper solution and posted a few times with similar ideas, I believe I may have found it but want some advise
We have a client with the following:
2x HP P2000 iSCSI SANS w/ redundant controllers each
2x File Servers cross connected to each SAN through iSCSI Running Datacore and using Datacores MPIO software (All data core is doing is mirroring the vDisk from one SAN to the other and providing transparent failover should an entire enclosure fail, and using
20GB of RAM for caching)
2x Hyper-V Servers in a cluster utilizing the Datacore Storage with an additional standalone Hyper-V server just hosting a couple VM’s on local storage.
We are looking to move them to the native windows stack and remove Datacore from the equation while providing a similar level of redundancy. My plan was to (Since Windows server doesn’t support mirroring one CSV to another I know 2016 may help in this area, and I cant use SAS JBODs and even if I did I wouldn’t have 3 enclosures to create an enclosure aware vDisk in storage spaces) was to:
Rebuild the Datacore boxes with 2012R2, create a file serve cluster, install the SOFS Role, use 1x P2000 SAN serving it to the file server cluster through multiple iSCSI connections utilizing native MPIO and creating a CSV then a continuously available SMB 3.0 share on top and serving it to the Hyper-V Cluster (I would also use Deduplication). This would host all the production VM’s (This would be the fast storage SAN).
I would then take the other SAN (With the slower storage) serve it directly to the standalone Hyper-V server (Again multiple iSCSI connections MPIO) and turn on Hyper-V replica from the cluster to the standalone and utilize this server as a DR scenario hoping to ease their concerns about not having redundancy at the SAN level with transparent failover in the event the production SAN dies (Though very unlikely, plugged into two separate UPS’s, on generators utilizing redundant switches, essentially the works).
My question is A do you see any issues with this configuration and B should I just be connecting my fast SAN directly to my hyper-v cluster. Are there any draw backs to not having that storage cluster in the middle, you mentioned CSV cache? I think they would feel best about utilizing all their current hardware even if the advantage to having that storage layer was only very small as they have the hardware and would like to use it. Thanks for your help in advance I know its somewhat of a long post!