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Optimize Hyper-V for SC Series
18 Dell EMC SC Series: Microsoft Hyper-V Best Practices | CML1009
Present SC Series volumes directly to guest VMs:
- In-guest iSCSI
- Virtual Fibre Channel (vFC) with Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V and newer
> SC Series Replay Manager offers limited support for protecting guest VMs using vFC.
• Present SC Series volumes indirectly to guest VMs as pass-through disks in Hyper-V
- Use of pass-through disks is a legacy configuration introduced with Windows Server 2008 Hyper-
V.
- While still supported, use of pass-through disks is discouraged by Dell EMC and Microsoft with
Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V and newer
2.5 Transport options
SC Series storage and Hyper-V support iSCSI, Fibre Channel, or front-end SAS, and the configuration will
typically include multipath I/O (MPIO) as a best practice for load balancing and failover protection.
Typically, an environment is configured to use a preferred transport when it is built and will be part of the
infrastructure core design. When deploying Hyper-V to existing environments, the existing transport is
typically used. Since Hyper-V supports iSCSI, Fibre Channel, and front-end SAS, deciding which transport to
use is usually based on customer preference and factors such as size of the environment, cost of the
hardware and the required support expertise.
It is not uncommon, especially in larger environments, to have more than one transport available. This might
be required to support collocated but diverse platforms with different transport requirements. When this is the
case, administrators might be able to choose between several different transport options.
Regardless of the transport, it is a best practice to ensure redundant paths are configured. For a test or
development environment that can accommodate down time without business impact, a less-costly, less-
resilient design that uses single path may be acceptable to the business.
2.5.1 SC Series and front-end SAS support for Hyper-V
All SC Series arrays can be configured to support iSCSI or Fibre Channel for front-end connectivity. In
addition, select SC Series arrays can be configured from the factory to support front-end SAS connectivity.
Front-end SAS may work well for small Hyper-V environments deployed in edge cases such as a branch
office or other remote location where avoiding the cost and overhead of maintaining infrastructure to support
Fibre Channel or iSCSI is desirable.
For more information about SC Series DAS configuration support for Hyper-V, see the guide:
Dell EMC SC
Series Storage with SAS Front-end Support for Microsoft Hyper-V.
2.5.2 Multiple transports
Although SC Series storage arrays support multiple transports, there is limited Microsoft host support for
configuring multiple transports on the same host. Except for a few valid use cases, a single transport (iSCSI,
FC or SAS-FE) should be used for each host server. In a Hyper-V cluster environment, all nodes should be
configured to use a single common transport.
For more information on using multiple transports, see the
Dell EMC SC Series and Microsoft MPIO best
practices guide.