Users Guide

Clustering Implementations for High Availability 19
Comparison of Guest and Host Clustering
Table 2-1 highlights the key differences between Hyper-V Guest Clustering
and Hyper- V Host Clustering.
Table 2-1. Comparison of Guest and Host Clustering
Category Hyper-V Guest Clustering Hyper-V Host Clustering
High Availability Scope
• The applications running
on the guest OS are the
clustered entities
• HA is only for these
applications and not for
the VM itself
• The virtual machines are
the clustered entities
• HA is for the virtual
machines as a whole
(including the guest
OSes and applications
within the VM)
Guest OS Requirements • Requires that the guest
OS is supported by
Hyper-V
• Requires that the guest
OS has cluster software
capability
• Requires that this cluster
software supports iSCSI
storage
• Solution is Guest OS
independent because the
cluster software is
running in parent
partition
Shared Storage Type •iSCSI only
• iSCSI initiator runs in
the guest OS
• Direct Attach SAS
• iSCSI
• Fiber Channel
•SMB Share
Implementation • Clustering has to be
configured within every
VM
• May be more complex to
manage if several VMs
need to be made into HA
VMs
• Clustering has to be
configured only in the
parent partition on each
host
• Implementation is
independent of the
number of VMs