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19 Dell EMC SC Series: Microsoft Hyper-V Best Practices | CML1009
2.6 MPIO best practices
The Windows Server operating system and Hyper-V (2008 and newer) natively support MPIO by the built in
Device Specific Module (DSM) provided by Microsoft. SC Series Storage supports the use of this DSM when
implementing MPIO.
It is very important to adjust MPIO timeout settings for your Hyper-V environment (both hosts and VMs) to
avoid service outages when performing routine SAN maintenance. This includes hosts that are configured to
use single path.
For more information on MPIO for Hyper-V environments, see the
Dell EMC SC Series and Microsoft MPIO
best practices guide.
2.7 Guest VMs and in-guest iSCSI and virtual Fibre Channel disks
In most cases, storage is presented to guest VMs as a virtual hard disk. If a use case requires direct-attached
storage, SC Series storage supports in-guest iSCSI and virtual Fibre Channel to present block storage
volumes directly to guest VMs.
• In-guest iSCSI: Simply use the iSCSI initiator software in the guest VM and configure the VM to use
iSCSI targets on the SC Series. Native iSCSI support is provided with Windows Server 2008 and
above.
iSCSI Initiator Properties
• Virtual Fibre Channel: With Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V and newer, Windows Server guest VMs
(2008 R2 and newer) support virtual Fibre Channel (vFC) adapters.
- This functionality was added by Microsoft in large part because many environments at the time
used Fibre Channel exclusively and shared virtual hard disks were not yet an available option.
- Virtual FC requires that all the components in the fabric (HBAs, switches, SC Series controllers)
support N_Port ID Virtualization (NPIV).
- The setup is more complicated than in-guest iSCSI. This
SC Series Virtual Fibre Channel for
Hyper-V demo video provides helpful configuration guidance.
- SC Series Replay Manager supports protecting Hyper-V guest VMs with in-guest iSCSI and vFC
volumes (some limitations exist). See the
Dell EMC SC Series Replay Manager for Hyper-V best
practice guide for more information.