Virtualise Windows Storage Server

[TheMagyar]

Hello all,

I know this has been covered a few times , but I

can't find the information I need - in fact, it seems to be confusing me

a little!

I have three ESXservers and one iSCSI SAN (Equalogic PS4000) with vSphere running my VMs. It's a fairly new project that has been fairly successful with the P2V of the standard servers. However, I now want to virtualise my NAS which runs Windows Storage Server 2003 R2 (WSS). I'm not sure if this is advisable based on the searches that I have been doing.

Anyway, I plan to virtualise the OS, and then point the data onto a Datastore on the SAN (formatted as NTFS). I would then use a host integration toolkit to hook the OS into the data.

I keep reading that NFS will be a problem due to slowing the system down, but I'm not sure why! Although NFS is installed on the WSS, we don't serve any shares using it.

Can anyone verify if what I'm trying to do is fine and if there are better ways to do it (without a massive amount of further investment)? Let me know if you have any questions.

Many thanks,

The Magyar

[asatoran]

...I now want to virtualise my NAS which runs Windows Storage Server 2003 R2 (WSS).

Most of the WSS boxes I've seen have OEM versions of WSS. (As far as I know, WSS is only available preinstalled on hardware and is not available as a separate item outside of MSDN. Correct me if I'm wrong.) Most OEM versions of Windows (WSS included) are tied to the hardware and the license can't be transfered to new hardware (virtual or physical.) If that is the case here, then from a legal standpoint, you can't do what you want.

In addition, if it's a branded OEM version of WSS, then you might not be able to do what you want anyway. As an academic experiment, we tried P2V our HP DL320 NAS running WSS2003r2. The conversion worked, but Windows detected the new hardware and wanted to reactivate. Unsurprisingly, the reactivation failed because Windows saw VMware "hardware" rather than HP hardware.

For most people, using standard Windows Server as a NAS may be sufficient. So unless you really need some of the "extra tools" that came with your NAS and WSS or have WSS only modules (e.g.: iSCSI target) then you may want to consider just building a new virtual machine using standard Windows Server.

That said, I don't know about other issues with Windows NAS as a VM. Hopefully others will post some helpful comments.

And regarding NFS slowdown. I haven't done extensive testing, but I have my ESX hosts connecting to my HP WSS box using NFS. No VMs are running from those shares; we use them to share ISOs. So I don't know about VM performance, but the NFS shares do not seem to be slowing down the NAS to any of the other users. (We also have the ESX-to-NFS traffic going over different NICs and an isolated LAN from the primary network.)

[TheMagyar]

Hi asatoran,

Yeah, ths was confirmed to me by my rep aftter I posted the question. Windows Storage Server is OEN only. Thanks for clarifying. It looks like I will virtualise a W2k8 R2 Volume LIcense VM for the OS and migrate our shares and home folders across. We have about 11,000 home folders, but only about 400 are ever in use at any time. So I'm hoping that the presormance of standard windows will suffice (over WSS - apparently it is more effiecient for file sharing?).

I'm still hoping to point an NTFS share from our SAN at the VM for the data, as opposed to providing a virtual disk. I have been told this will provide better performance. I don't suppose you have any comments on this, or if you can see a better way of doing it, or if you know how to do this?

Thanks

The Magyar

[asatoran]

...So I'm hoping that the presormance of standard windows will suffice (over WSS - apparently it is more effiecient for file sharing?).

I don't know if WSS is more efficient. I think it just had more management tools geared toward the NAS functionality, rather than performance. (Correct me if I'm wrong.)

I'm still hoping to point an NTFS share from our SAN at the VM for the data, as opposed to providing a virtual disk. I have been told this will provide better performance. I don't suppose you have any comments on this, or if you can see a better way of doing it, or if you know how to do this?

No real comments, other than a it may be "good enough" regardless. If my info is correct, that WSS is no more efficient a file server than standard Windows Server, then virtual versions of both will have the same performance. If traffic to the virtual NAS is light, and/or you give the virtual NAS it's own NICs and it's own spindles, then you may be ok. My experience is with small organizations so I don't normally have to deal with that many users. Even now, my company only has about 50 users, so the performance of our VMs is more than adequate. But 400 users doesn't seem to be too bad, unless they're simultaneously accessing very large files or something. (You may want to research best practices for virtual file servers. Hopefully someone with more experience will comment.)

[MentalNomad]

WSS is more efficient as a file server than standard windows, but it's not inherent to the OS build, it's inherent to the configuration. WSS is basically windows Server tweaked to be optimized for a specific purpose.

You can duplicate the performance by performing a set of registry hacks and other tweaks - I've seen a list of them on Microsoft Storage Server team's blog. Vendors selling WSS appliances tend to also select their components/drivers to perform well with WSS, so it may be difficult to duplicate the full performance package, but it is certainly doable.

On top of that, WSS adds the management tools, which you can't get on a regular windows server (at this time). I've seen some mention that the future road map calls for the WSS product to become a server role, but can't confirm that anywhere.

[MentalNomad]

As an FYI - Dell's PowerVault NX3000 is a WSS appliance.

The server on which it's built is their PowerEdge R700 server.

In theory, you can get a PowerEdge R700 (or R710, now), get the same components, install win server, do the performance tweaks, and get the EXACT same performance, less the management tools.

I don't know where the comparative costs come in - I believe with standard server you'll need CALs, but with WSS you're licensed for any number of users, so the cost/benefit analysis may depend on your environment.