Hi guys. I'm hoping someone can help me more fully understand VLAN use and implementation in it's entirety.

Let me start off by saying that I am currently a (green) sysadmin with about two years experience, not so much on the networking aspect yet. I do however understand most networking basics like the OSI model, routing and switching, subnetting and so forth, though I'm a bit rusty.

I have actually already configured one VLAN for my company's wifi. I set up all our switches with a number of access ports for each wifi AP to be connected and then added trunk ports for that VLAN so that all our AP's can reach back to our Sonicwall appliance where they are managed. Then I used the Sonicwall firewall settings to create separate corporate and guest wifi. This all makes sense to me, but it's Sonicwall, so it's not really the "traditional" way VLANs would be set up and managed, etc.

I guess my confusion with VLANs is when it comes while trying to visualize how two different networks on two different VLANs need to communicate. I mean, I get that a VLAN is logically the same as having two separate switches and if there are devices on two different networks trying to communicate, then routing is necessary. And yes, I've heard of "router on a stick".

Like in a case where I have a VoIP set up, with phones on one VLAN and computers on another. The computers and VoIP systems should normally never need to communicate with each other (I assume) unless there is like some VoIP related application installed on a user's workstation. In that case, I assume that at some point, data is crossing over between the two networks, through the two VLAN's.

Also, my main reason for asking this: I am trying to set up a LAB network that will reside on it's own VLAN, completely separate from my company's production systems. But if it's 100% segregated, then I'm not going to be able to access it from my work pc, so I'll have to set up a separate computer that is connected to the lab VLAN. That is, unless I implement some kind of ACL..

Anyway, if someone could give me a bit of clarity or direction on this, I would appreciate it.

Just checked in and I'm dying laughing!

@kooler said in Can I get some direction on setting up Hyper-V server with a storage cluster?:

@dave247 said in Can I get some direction on setting up Hyper-V server with a storage cluster?:

I have a few servers that are now available for whatever I want, since I've virtualized them to our vSphere 6.5 environment. We currently have a single SAN unit for our vm datastore which connects to two switches and then to three virtual hosts (SAM's Inverted Pyramid of Doom thing).

Anyway, I am trying to experiment with a different design as well as set up a new test environment. I want to install Hyper-V 2016 Server on my most powerful spare server, then I want to use my other two servers as mirrored or a distributed storage cluster.

I am not 100% on what is best practice on how exactly to set this up, so I'm hoping for some input. I mean, I'm a sysadmin at my job, so I understand how to install and configure stuff.. but I've not set up a completely new environment from scratch before.

Any advice is much appreciated!

SAM has a point (thanks for reference!)

Dave ping me anton AT starwind DOT com and I'll get you in touch with engineers who could help. You're welcomed to proceed with either commercial or a free version (no time bombs, no capacity or feature limits there).

https://www.starwindsoftware.com/starwind-virtual-san

https://www.starwindsoftware.com/starwind-virtual-san-free

Good luck

Sure, I may do that if I need help. I really only plan to use this as a lab + backup testing environment at work, so I would use the free version.. not sure what the difference is though.

@scottalanmiller said in Can I get some direction on setting up Hyper-V server with a storage cluster?:

I'm late, but yes, @StarWind_Software is the way to go here. It's free and native to Hyper-V and does exactly what you are looking to do.

Hi Scott. Yes, thanks. I am going to work on setting up vSAN. Looks like it will be a fun learning experience for me.

@romo said in Can I get some direction on setting up Hyper-V server with a storage cluster?:

Just as @Tim_G suggested, your best bet would be a Starwind HyperConverged vSan setup.

https://www.starwindsoftware.com/technical_papers/StarWind-Virtual-SAN-Hyper-Converged-3-nodes-scenario-with-Hyper-V-Cluster.pdf

Yeah I like that.. it looks really slick.. I'm gonna try that

@emad-r said in Can I get some direction on setting up Hyper-V server with a storage cluster?:

@dave247

wait till you hear the recommendation to create distributed storage on a VM level, that will get you confused.

Please elaborate?

@tim_g

@tim_g said in Can I get some direction on setting up Hyper-V server with a storage cluster?:

The best free way to do it with Windows is Starwind vSAN. If you want to keep your computer and storage separate, you can run it on your two other servers for storage... but I wouldn't keep them separate. You could have all 3 servers as compute+storage, and limit the VMs to run only on the powerful server. And if that server goes down, you still have the option to run them on one of the other two.

ok, thanks for that too. I was thinking of doing it this way because my other two servers (that would be used for storage) are not very powerful systems. They are Poweredge R420's with one socket and like 8 GB of RAM.

@black3dynamite said in Can I get some direction on setting up Hyper-V server with a storage cluster?:

Here are few guides that can help you get started.
https://www.altaro.com/hyper-v/failover-cluster-manager/
https://www.tech-coffee.net/2-node-hyperconverged-cluster-with-windows-server-2016/
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj863389(v=ws.11).aspx

Awesome, thanks!

I have a few servers that are now available for whatever I want, since I've virtualized them to our vSphere 6.5 environment. We currently have a single SAN unit for our vm datastore which connects to two switches and then to three virtual hosts (SAM's Inverted Pyramid of Doom thing).

Anyway, I am trying to experiment with a different design as well as set up a new test environment. I want to install Hyper-V 2016 Server on my most powerful spare server, then I want to use my other two servers as mirrored or a distributed storage cluster.

I am not 100% on what is best practice on how exactly to set this up, so I'm hoping for some input. I mean, I'm a sysadmin at my job, so I understand how to install and configure stuff.. but I've not set up a completely new environment from scratch before.

Any advice is much appreciated!

@dashrender said in Questions about licensing issues after converting physical SQL server to virtual:

No he's talking about SQL in a VM - what makes you (the OP) worry about this? Why worry about SQL, but not whatever is running on your other three VM hosts?

I'm actually talking about the converted system. Converting physical to virtual presents potential issues. I think I'll restore to a test environment first..

@dashrender said in Questions about licensing issues after converting physical SQL server to virtual:

In today's world, you don't skip virtualization, unless you have a specific reason to skip it. So, if you are replacing the drives anyway - when you reinstall, start by installing a hypervisor - Hyper-V or KVM are both 100% free. You're running ESXi already, so if you have an open license for a third host (assuming you have an essentials package, you could use that license on this host). Then install your single VM on this rebuilt server.

Yeah, we have the essentials package and we already have three hosts. Like I said, I would love to just make this a virtual machine, but I want to make sure it will work without any issues.

@dashrender said in Questions about licensing issues after converting physical SQL server to virtual:

If you replaced all the drives, why not virtualize it at the same time? RAID 10 along with converting to a VM seems like a good plan. Converting allows you more recovery options with no penalties.

If you can swing for a good RAID card with some cache, you'll probably notice some real gains in IOPs.

Now I'm confused... I was initially talking about converting it to a vm and running it in our virtual environment (vSphere 6.5) with a 20TB SAN/storage controller, completely separate unit from the R320. The other option is to essentially swap the RAID 5 for RAID 10 and continue using it as a physical server. It's one or the other. I don't understand what you mean about switching the RAID 10 + converting to virtual, sorry.

Thanks for the help.

@dashrender said in Questions about licensing issues after converting physical SQL server to virtual:

That said, if disk performance is your issue, not processor, then perhaps backing up the DB, then wiping our the current config, setting up RAID 10 HDD or RAID 5 SSD on that box will give you what you need. We don't know what your current drive setup is (how many drives, what size, what spindle speed).

RAID 5, we can only hope that the server is at least 8 years old though, and really more like 15 still being on RAID 5 an all.

This server is an 8-bay chassis and currently has 4x 600GB 6Gbps SAS HDD's in RAID 5 on a PERC H710 Mini (embedded) controller.

I have thought of other strategies, but the only other one I would be comfortable with is to get some extra 600GB drives and swap them out with the old drives, put them in a RAID 10, then restore the old system from a backup (using SPX). This way, if there are any issues, I can just throw the old drives back in..

Hi. New here..

I have a Poweredge R320 running Server 2012 R2 Standard which is running Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 (64bit). This server has always been a bit slow with often very high disk I/O. Performance has gotten worse over time and I believe it's due to the fact that it's disks are in a RAID 5, and the SQL DB has gotten larger over the years/had more use, etc.

Anyway, I wish to virtualize this system because our storage controller is RAID 10 with much better IOPs. We have 3x ESXi hosts, each with dual sockets and better processors than the R320 server as well, but I'm really only looking to improve disk I/O. This server is running a single Xeon E5-2440 0 (6 cores) btw.

I want to convert this system from physical to virtual (using vCenter Converter) and verify that there are no issues before we pay more money for licensing, assuming we have to pay to change # of CPU and cores. If there is an issue, I can just revert and we won't be out $. I am just unclear on if SQL Server 2008 actually knows when there's a hardware change and if it will stop functioning or something, or if the system will continue on without any issues.

Thanks. Also, hi Scott.