Hyper-V: adding multiple virtual machines to a cluster on the same disk

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Stefan Cuypers - 17 Jul 2008 10:58 GMT

Hi,

Is it possible to have a single cluster disk containing more than one
virtual machine under Hyper-V? The machines would then fail over together.
We've done this on Virtual Server 2005 R2 in order to save on drive letters.
If we need one drive letter per virtual machine we're limited to about 25
virtual machines in the cluster!
I've tried to do it, but when adding the 2nd virtual machine to the cluster
the wizzard complains that the disk is not available.

regards,
Stefan.

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Rob McShinsky - 20 Jul 2008 03:36 GMT

Drive letters should not be a problem since you can place guests on
individual drives without drive letters. You can use the Volume GUID
instead of the drive letter. It is a little confusing at first and some of
the tool sets for managing Volume GUID is a bit limited, but it works well.
It is also much easier to manage with SCVMM 2008 that is still in beta. In
the Hyper-V management console just use the Volume GUID like you would a
drive letter. To see the Volume GUIDs, go to a command prompt and use the
MOUNTVOL utility. If this sounds a bit like mud, please feel free to drop
me a line at my blog.

Signature

Rob McShinsky
http://www.virtuallyaware.net

> Hi,
>
[quoted text clipped - 8 lines]
> regards,
> Stefan.

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Stefan Cuypers - 22 Jul 2008 08:46 GMT

Rob,

Thanks for the tip. This indeed seems to work, although there are 2 issues
with it:
- The Failover Cluster Management wizzard does not recognize the Volume GUID
paths. It reports warnings like: The path '\\?\Volume{... is not on a
failover cluster... So after adding the virtual machine to the cluster, we
have to manually add the storage and storage dependancies.
- Windows explorer (and all the Browse for files/folders dialog boxes) does
not seem to support the Volume GUID paths. So we can't browse them.

Stefan.

> Drive letters should not be a problem since you can place guests on
> individual drives without drive letters. You can use the Volume GUID
[quoted text clipped - 19 lines]
>> regards,
>> Stefan.

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Rob McShinsky - 23 Jul 2008 03:52 GMT

Yes you are correct on both issues.

The first issue, the Volume GUID option in a Failover Cluster config is only
a problem when making a guest highly available with the Failover Cluster
console. If you are using SCVMM 2008, it will set this up for you whne you
provision or migrate a server to the cluster

The second issue as far as browsing Volume GUIDs is a pain. Working with
Windows you take the ability to browse files in a GUI for granted. You can
"see" what is on a Volume GUID from the command line i.e. dir \\?\Volume\\
(remember the second back slash. ) You can also use the copy command, not
xcopy or robocopy, to copy files to the Volume GUID. It is limited, and I
have put my 2 cents in on making this managability similar to that of a
drive letter, but it does work. Your Unix/Linux counterparts will be
impressed with you empracing the command line again.

Signature

Rob McShinsky
http://www.virtuallyaware.net

> Rob,
>
[quoted text clipped - 32 lines]
>>> regards,
>>> Stefan.

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Stefan Cuypers - 23 Jul 2008 07:33 GMT

Great info. I tried the commandline but couldn't get it to work. The double
backslash in the end did the trick (I never would have guessed that :-) ).

Stefan Cuypers

> Yes you are correct on both issues.
>
[quoted text clipped - 48 lines]
>>>> regards,
>>>> Stefan.

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