Switch – Setting up Hyper-V Server 2012 with active/active failover

bondingfailoverhyper-v-server-2012networkingswitch

I want to set up Hyper-V server according to the following:

Diagram

I want the Hyper-V server to, if both interfaces are up, to use the NIC connected to Switch A for storage traffic, and the NIC connected to Switch B for all other IP traffic.

I know this configuration is achievable in ESXi by adding both interfaces as active to a vSwitch and using the "Override switch failover order" option on the port groups or VMkernel Interfaces to setup an active/standby configuration for those specific interfaces. Is there any way to do the same thing with Windows Server 2012 and Hyper-V?

The reason I want to do it this way is because I do not have the neccessary equipment for a dedicated storage network, but I still want to seperate out the storage traffic, and try to minimize the load on the link between the two switch stack members, and to minimize contention for network resources, while still providing failover.

The alternative would be to use port based load balancing, but if I were to do that, I could not control the amount of traffic that would flow across the cross-stack link, making it potentially act as a bottleneck.

Best Answer

You should not try setting up teaming for connections carrying iSCSI traffic as it is unsupported (although arguably it will technically work with some limitations).

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee338480(v=ws.10).aspx

Installing and Configuring Microsoft iSCSI Initiator

[...]

Applies To: Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2012

[...]

Use Microsoft MultiPath IO (MPIO) to manage multiple paths to iSCSI storage. Microsoft does not support teaming on network adapters that are used to connect to iSCSI-based storage devices.

[...]

  • Configure additional paths for high availability. Use MPIO or multiple connections per session (MCS) with additional network adapters in the server. This creates additional connections to the storage array in Microsoft iSCSI Initiator through redundant Ethernet switch fabrics.

Using MC/S would be taking the easiest route as long as your target supports that. It would need two active interfaces with different IP addresses on the target side.

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