One of the trends in virtualized technologies is the move to Hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI). Hyperconverged infrastructure provides a modern approach to hardware and software as a single unit. Everything is included “in the box,” allowing admins to concentrate on the more critical part of the solution – the applications and workloads.
Hyperconverged infrastructure provides many benefits to Hyper-V environments as well. Let’s look at hyperconverged Hyper-V for beginners and see the benefits offered by hyperconverged Hyper-V.
What is Hyperconverged Hyper-V?
First of all, what is hyperconverged infrastructure related to Hyper-V? Hyperconverged Hyper-V combines the benefits of modern software-defined storage, networking, and computing in a single hardware device with software solutions wrapped around the hardware.
Instead of having discrete Storage Area Network (SAN) devices with provisioned storage, HCI infrastructure combines storage into the server chassis. It uses modern software-defined storage solutions like Storage Spaces Direct to provide highly available storage distributed across the nodes in the HCI cluster.
Keep in mind that HCI solutions are not specific to Microsoft Hyper-V. Instead, HCI represents the modern hardware architecture that many customers prefer and offers tremendous advantages from an infrastructure and hardware management perspective.
For example, with hyperconverged Hyper-V, organizations can run their virtual workloads on a single, easy-to-manage platform. In addition, hyperconverged Hyper-V eliminates the need for multiple hardware devices and the complexity of managing them separately.
Benefits of Hyperconverged Hyper-V
Hyperconverged Hyper-V provides a variety of benefits to organizations modernizing their Hyper-V infrastructure:
- Streamlined management – HCI solutions provide a simplified and consolidated solution, combining hardware, software, and management services in a single package
- Scalability – With HCI solutions, businesses can easily scale the solution up or down, either adding resources to the existing nodes in the cluster or additional nodes to the cluster
- Cost benefits – With HCI and Hyper-V solutions, companies can reduce the costs they incur by eliminating separate hardware devices and the management tasks involved with managing the separate hardware
- Improved Performance – HCI solutions can help improve performance by eliminating common bottlenecks and latency resulting from separate hardware connected via network devices or other means. Higher performance is achieved with the “all-in-the-box” solution that hyperconverged infrastructure provides
- High availability – Hyperconverged Hyper-V provides high availability for virtualized workloads due to the consolidated hardware and software-defined approach to protecting your data. If one node fails, the workload can be automatically moved to another node, ensuring it remains available
Implementing Hyperconverged Hyper-V
Many hardware vendors are closely working with hypervisor vendors like Microsoft and VMware to produce purpose-built hardware that is certified to run hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) along with the software-defined storage solutions that power them.
For example, Microsoft has a turnkey solution called Azure Stack HCI that utilizes purpose-built hardware running a specialized Windows operating system named Azure Stack HCI. It is not simply another version of Windows Server 2019 or 2022. Instead, it is a special-purpose OS built for hyperconverged infrastructure and software-defined storage.
Microsoft also has a partnership with Dell EMC with the VxRail offering. The VxRail line is optimized to support VMware vSphere with vSAN. However, it also supports running Hyper-V. In addition, Nutanix has an offering that supports running Hyper-V on top of its hardware and is supported for production use cases with hyperconverged Hyper-V.
These solutions offer the advantage of turnkey hardware supported out of the box for running Microsoft hyperconverged Hyper-V solutions. In addition, it allows businesses to hit the ground running with supported platforms for their virtual workloads.
Two similar but different offerings for Hyperconverged Hyper-V
There are two offerings to note with hyperconverged Hyper-V to configure for running your virtual workloads. These include running Windows Server with the Hyper-V role and Storage Spaces Direct (S2D) and running Azure Stack HCI.
Storage Spaces Direct
Running hyperconverged infrastructure with Windows Server and Storage Spaces Direct is the more traditional approach to HCI with Hyper-V. It is akin to running standard infrastructure on-premises with Windows Server and the Hyper-V role. Storage Spaces Direct (S2D) is the solution used with Windows Server and Hyper-V for the software-defined storage component of the hyperconverged infrastructure solution.
The S2D solution provides logical, software-defined storage from locally attached storage in each virtual host in the hyperconverged cluster. With the local storage option, organizations no longer need to worry about external storage attached via a Storage Area Network (SAN) device.
Microsoft recommends having at least four servers with locally attached storage running Windows Server along with Storage Spaces Direct for consistent performance availability and scalability. In addition, the recommendation includes servers with the same hardware configuration to ensure consistent storage performance. Once the servers are configured, S2D can be enabled, and virtual disks created.
Azure Stack HCI
We have already mentioned Azure Stack HCI. However, it is the more cloud-native approach for building an on-premises cluster using the latest hyperconverged Hyper-V technology. With Azure Stack HCI, Microsoft provides an Azure-enabled solution that natively integrates with the cloud and can even run cloud-native workloads, like Azure Kubernetes Service containers.
With Azure Stack HCI, you can also use other native Azure services like Azure Site Recovery, which provides disaster recovery protection for virtualized workloads.
Best Practices for Hyperconverged Hyper-V
It is essential to follow hyperconverged Hyper-V best practices when designing your deployment. Note the following:
- Before deploying Hyperconverged Hyper-V, it is essential to plan your deployment carefully. Use the right hardware and software components to configure your networking and storage. Use prebuilt vendor-certified hardware that has been rigorously tested and validated with hyperconverged Hyper-V systems
- Monitor your hyperconverged Hyper-V environments with monitoring tools to track the performance of your virtualized workloads and identify any bottlenecks or issues
- While hyperconverged Hyper-V environments are incredibly robust and resilient, it is still crucial to have a solid disaster recovery plan. Use third-party backup solutions like BDRSuite to create data backups that align with recommended best practices like the 3-2-1 backup best practice methodology
- Use automation tools to automate routine tasks such as provisioning new VMs or configuring networking and storage for consistency and standardization
- Keep your Hyperconverged Hyper-V environment up-to-date with the latest software updates and patches to ensure that it is secure and running at peak performance
Conclusion
Hyperconverged Hyper-V environments are extremely robust and resilient and provide modern features and capabilities that integrate cloud-native services from Azure. For example, Azure Stack HCI allows organizations to run native Azure services in their on-premises data centers, such as the Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS). Implementing Hyperconverged Hyper-V requires careful planning and attention to best practices, but the benefits are significant. Organizations can easily deploy and manage their virtualized workloads with the proper hardware and software components, monitoring tools, and a backup and disaster recovery plan.
Read More:
Beginners’ Guide for Microsoft Hyper-V: Azure Hypervisor vs Hyper-V – Part-57
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