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Optimize Hyper-V for SC Series
26 Dell EMC SC Series: Microsoft Hyper-V Best Practices | CML1009
2.16 Placement of Active Directory domain controllers
It is a best practice to avoid placing all the Microsoft Active Directory® (AD) domain controllers for a domain
on the same Hyper-V cluster (as VMs) if the cluster service requires AD authentication to start.
If the cluster goes off line (along with all the domain controller VMs), the cluster service be will not be able
start.
To protect against this situation in SC Series environments, it is a best practice to configure at least one
domain controller on a physical server with local storage (along with other critical services) so that regardless
of the state of the external storage array or storage fabric, critical services such as AD, DNS, and DHCP will
be continuously available if the network is also functional.
Additional strategies for domain controllers in Hyper-V environments include the following:
• Place virtualized domain controllers on standalone Hyper-V hosts or on individual cluster nodes if
there is an AD dependency for cluster service authentication.
• Use Hyper-V Replica (2012 and newer) to ensure that domain controller VMs can be recovered on
another host.
• Leverage Windows Server 2016 Hyper-V and newer which does not have an AD dependency to
authenticate cluster services.
2.17 SC Series data reduction and Hyper-V
Data compression was introduced with SCOS version 6.5.1, and enhancements were added with the SCOS
6.5.10 and 6.7 releases. Data deduplication was introduced with SCOS 7.0 and works in tandem with
compression to further reduce the amount of data stored on an SC Series array.
Data reduction works seamlessly in the background as part of the SC Series daily Data Progression cycle
each evening. Hyper-V environments benefit from data reduction without any additional configuration
required.
Data reduction can be enabled, paused, or discontinued on a volume by volume basis. It can also be paused
system-wide. For more information on how data reduction with deduplication and compression work with SC
Series storage, see the Dell Storage Center OS 7.0 Data Reduction with Deduplication and Compression
white paper.