I creating a Hyper-V home setup.
I have a single Machine (haswell CPU, 16GB ram, and SSD)
Storage is attached as DAS (5 Disk USB 3.0 enclosure)
I want that machine to be a Hyper-V host (Windows Std. 2012R2 or the Free Hyper-V Server).
I need to have the following virtual machines (So that I can change the machine the run on):
– Windows Server 2012R2 Essentials (Should be a file server SMB 3 for the storage)
– Some other VM's for testing and development.
How to I attach the storage, to the host or guest?
Are there any performance considerations?
Best Answer
The down side of installing Hyper-V on the standard edition is that you can only run 2 VMs at a time but you can install as many VMs as you like.
To attach the storage, you will have to connect it to the host by plugging the USB cable and create a share folder. Once you done this, you can access the folder on the guest by opening run command (start\run) and typing \hostcomputername\sharefolder to access the folder.
You can also create a drive map on the guest, which will save by typing the location over again. To create a drive map on the Windows 2012R2, open Windows explorer and right click on Map network drive. A dialog box will open and choose a drive letter and type in the path of the shared folder and click on finish. This will create a drive map.
The performance should be OK if your host machine support usb 3. If it doesn't then copying large data from guest to host will take time however you will not notice this if you're copying small data across.