Hyper-V 2016 with physical RAID Disk for Files: pass through or discrete device assignment or what

file-sharinghyper-vhyper-v-server-2016

I've installed a new physical server with Hyper-V Core 2016 on it. I got "two" drives on the physical machine:

  1. NVMe (M.2 2280 Samsung 960 Pro) with two partition:
    • C:\ = 80 GB = for the physical system OS (Hyper-V Core 2016)
    • D:\ = 900 GB = for all the VHD/VHDX Files
  2. SATA RAID6 (8x 4GB SATA over LSI MegaRAID SAS 9361-8i = ~26GB "Drive")
    • ?? = For all Data/Files/Documents

What is the best way on Hyper-V in this scenario to use the SATA Drive as a "File Share"?
I think of something like VT-d, Drive or PCI-Raid-Card pass-through to a virtual File Server (Windows Server 2016)? So that my physical Server just serves as a Hyper-V Server and can ignore the RAID-Card/RAID-Drives. What is the best way to achieve that?

  1. Passthrough Disk? Taking the RAID-Disk offline on the physical system and then add it over the hyper-v manager to the virtual file system? But then I can’t manage the RAID? Or have to manage the RAID on the physical OS?
  2. Discrete Device Assignment? Using the new feature from Hyper-V 2016 to passthrough the RAID-Card (PCIx) to the virtual file system? Is that even possible?
  3. Create a VHDX on the RAID-Disk and add that Disk to the File-System as secondary Drive on which I can deploy the files?
  4. Other possibility?

MANY THANKS!

Best Answer

Pass-through disks are no longer recommended. They no longer provide higher performance than virtual disks, they aren't supported much beyond basic support, they make backups harder, they have a lack of third-party tools and they make portability harder.

Creating a VHDX and using that virtual disk would be what I suggest.

To read more about why pass-through disks are a bad idea, have a look at this article by Eric Siron: http://www.altaro.com/hyper-v/hyper-v-pass-through-disks/

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