Partitions For Hyper-V Server
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I am getting ready to set up my new server, which is going to run Hyper-V, with two VM instances (at least) of Windows Server on it.
I have a RAID 5 (SSD, don't worry!) array that will be more than enough for these two VMs.
How do people typically partition the drive on the Hyper-V server? Do you just make one big
partition since there won't be any data on it, per se, other than the VMs?Also, what is the best practice these days for setting up a Windows Server for my VM instances? Used to be 20GB, though I know that's way out of the times today. Or since these will be VMs, do you make them dynamic, and not worry about the size?
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I try and avoid partitioning, it's almost a universal law that you'll run out of space on one and use none of the other.
Keep it big, let HV gobble up disk as it wants.
Setup an alert (email or whatever) for disk space low.
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@BRRABill said:
I am getting ready to set up my new server, which is going to run Hyper-V, with two VM instances (at least) of Windows Server on it.
I have a RAID 5 (SSD, don't worry!) array that will be more than enough for these two VMs.
How do people typically partition the drive on the Hyper-V server? Do you just make one big
partition since there won't be any data on it, per se, other than the VMs?Also, what is the best practice these days for setting up a Windows Server for my VM instances? Used to be 20GB, though I know that's way out of the times today. Or since these will be VMs, do you make them dynamic, and not worry about the size?
For the VM instances, here, we allocate 60GB, but thin provision the disks. I generally run my Hyper-V servers with one big
drive. -
I generally break it up between
and D:. Run at something like 50-60Gb. That way if you fill up 
with VMs they don't mess with the operating system. -
On Hyper-V, yes, just one big partition in this case. Two really, one for Hyper-V itself, then one for all of the VHDs. Do not make a partition for each file, one partition per file does not have any benefits.
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Put all your VMs in the same spot and use thin provisioning always.
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@coliver said:
I generally break it up between
and D:. Run at something like 50-60Gb. That way if you fill up with VMs they don't mess with the operating system.I thought I read that somewhere.
Hopefully I'll be watching and be alerterd (and smart enough to know the max size of all VMs), but if a VHD got out of hand it could bring down ALL the other VMs.
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Are we honestly looking at a system with a 200GB RAID for this?
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@scottalanmiller said:
On Hyper-V, yes, just one big partition in this case. Two really, one for Hyper-V itself, then one for all of the VHDs. Do not make a partition for each file, one partition per file does not have any benefits.
To expand on this, if you can install Hyper-V into a USB stick/SD Card, then that would be on it's own partition. Then all of the SSD space would go to the VM datastore. Otherwise I agree with Scott. Probably 40 GB to Hyper-V, and the rest to the datastore.
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@Dashrender said:
@scottalanmiller said:
On Hyper-V, yes, just one big partition in this case. Two really, one for Hyper-V itself, then one for all of the VHDs. Do not make a partition for each file, one partition per file does not have any benefits.
To expand on this, if you can install Hyper-V into a USB stick/SD Card, then that would be on it's own partition. Then all of the SSD space would go to the VM datastore. Otherwise I agree with Scott. Probably 40 GB to Hyper-V, and the rest to the datastore.
Has anyone gotten Hyper-V to install on a SD card? Just wondering.
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@coliver I thought about doing it on servers I put out this summer, but never tested it to try it out. I just created a small virtual disk off my raid controller for hyperv.
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@BRRABill said:
@coliver said:
I generally break it up between
and D:. Run at something like 50-60Gb. That way if you fill up with VMs they don't mess with the operating system.I thought I read that somewhere.
Hopefully I'll be watching and be alerterd (and smart enough to know the max size of all VMs), but if a VHD got out of hand it could bring down ALL the other VMs.
No, if that is a possibility then you've made other mistakes. Thin provisioning alone creates no danger. You are thinking of over provisioning.
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@coliver said:
@Dashrender said:
@scottalanmiller said:
On Hyper-V, yes, just one big partition in this case. Two really, one for Hyper-V itself, then one for all of the VHDs. Do not make a partition for each file, one partition per file does not have any benefits.
To expand on this, if you can install Hyper-V into a USB stick/SD Card, then that would be on it's own partition. Then all of the SSD space would go to the VM datastore. Otherwise I agree with Scott. Probably 40 GB to Hyper-V, and the rest to the datastore.
Has anyone gotten Hyper-V to install on a SD card? Just wondering.
I know lots of people have done it. MS even has some vendors that ship that way.
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@coliver said:
@Dashrender said:
@scottalanmiller said:
On Hyper-V, yes, just one big partition in this case. Two really, one for Hyper-V itself, then one for all of the VHDs. Do not make a partition for each file, one partition per file does not have any benefits.
To expand on this, if you can install Hyper-V into a USB stick/SD Card, then that would be on it's own partition. Then all of the SSD space would go to the VM datastore. Otherwise I agree with Scott. Probably 40 GB to Hyper-V, and the rest to the datastore.
Has anyone gotten Hyper-V to install on a SD card? Just wondering.
That'd work ok I guess - I bet HV has a ton more writes than something like vmware though. If you're going to do it, I'd suggest something like the below, it will not have any issues. Bonus: it has a real controller in it so you'll get way faster speeds.
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA7RD3GE1841&cm_re=usb_ssd--20-233-767--Product
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Faster to do what, though?
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@scottalanmiller bonus faster, not necessary faster
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@DustinB3403 said:
Are we honestly looking at a system with a 200GB RAID for this?
What do you mean?
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Originally I bought the server with a SATA 7200rpm array just for the Hyper-V server, but now that I have SSD in there (and more room than I'll ever really need) I figured I'd just do it all on the SSD array.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@coliver said:
@Dashrender said:
@scottalanmiller said:
On Hyper-V, yes, just one big partition in this case. Two really, one for Hyper-V itself, then one for all of the VHDs. Do not make a partition for each file, one partition per file does not have any benefits.
To expand on this, if you can install Hyper-V into a USB stick/SD Card, then that would be on it's own partition. Then all of the SSD space would go to the VM datastore. Otherwise I agree with Scott. Probably 40 GB to Hyper-V, and the rest to the datastore.
Has anyone gotten Hyper-V to install on a SD card? Just wondering.
I know lots of people have done it. MS even has some vendors that ship that way.
That's good to know, last time I looked into it Microsoft was frowning on the practice.
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@coliver said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@coliver said:
@Dashrender said:
@scottalanmiller said:
On Hyper-V, yes, just one big partition in this case. Two really, one for Hyper-V itself, then one for all of the VHDs. Do not make a partition for each file, one partition per file does not have any benefits.
To expand on this, if you can install Hyper-V into a USB stick/SD Card, then that would be on it's own partition. Then all of the SSD space would go to the VM datastore. Otherwise I agree with Scott. Probably 40 GB to Hyper-V, and the rest to the datastore.
Has anyone gotten Hyper-V to install on a SD card? Just wondering.
I know lots of people have done it. MS even has some vendors that ship that way.
That's good to know, last time I looked into it Microsoft was frowning on the practice.
That's a debated subject. Microsoft has never frowned on it as a whole, ever. MS has said that officially it is an OEM supported practice only. But Microsoft's official reps (which although they are the hired spokespeople for Microsoft officially, Jared does not agree that they speak for them, which I get to some degree, but they are the official reps nonetheless) have agreed that it is both an industry and a Hyper-V best practice regardless of the "official" support statement on Technet. Technet says that it is not officially supported but does not frown on it. All they are doing is encouraging OEM installations.
So you can look at it as officially MS recommend or unofficially MS recommended, you can look at it as officially unsupported or likely wink wink supported, but there is no question that MS does not frown on it.
