Storage solution with a Windows Hyper-V cluster

I'm a bit of a newbie when it comes to storage, so I'd be grateful for any pointers!

I'm trying to plan out a small Windows Server 2012R2 Hyper-V cluster for an SMB consisting of 2 servers and since I wanted to include a failover option, should one of the hosts die, I wanted to include some sort of shared storage to enable the VMs to fail over to the second host if needed.

After doing some research, it would seem a direct-attached-storage box might be the best solution, or at least the best compromise between cost and performance.

If at all possible, I'd like to have some sort of redundancy for the storage and of course RAID comes to mind. Unfortunately according to this, it would seem RAID is not supported:

"The clustered storage pool MUST be comprised of Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) connected physical disks. Layering any form of storage subsystem, whether an internal RAID card or an external RAID box, regardless of being directly connected or connected via a storage fabric, is not supported."

...and this is where I get confused. My understanding is that whatever the DAS storage solution does internally (e.g. set up a RAID volume on a few disks and give the hosts access to said volume) should be completely transparent to the hosts themselves. Said hosts should be then able to use this volume to create a Windows Failover Cluster and a Hyper-V cluster after that.

So, on to my questions:

1. does the article only apply to WFC storage configured using Storage Space? i.e. did I completely misunderstand it?


2. Will I be able to use an SAS DAS box with a RAID volume (with SAS HBA cards for the hosts) to configure my cluster?

Thanks in advance!

Answer

No, hosts shouldn't care what's below the LUN, but there are a few things you should consider:

1. Organizing your data.

Consider a physical server for which you would organize the disks and files as follows: System files, including a page file, on one physical disk; Data files on another physical disk.

For an equivalent clustered VM, you should organize the volumes and files in a similar way: System files, including a page file, in a VHD file on one CSV, Data files in a VHD file on another CSV.

Try to keep the same rules when/if you add new VM hosts.

2. Adding any disks to Available Storage

In Failover Cluster Manager, in the console tree, expand the name of the cluster, and then expand Storage. Right-click Disks, and then select Add Disk. A list appears showing the disks that can be added for use in a failover cluster.
Select the LUN disk or disks you want to add, and then select OK.
The disks are now assigned to the Available Storage group.

The disks can be the LUNs, they do not have to be physical disks.

You do not even have to use pools (depending on how you planned things to be done).

Practically, as long as you managed to create the LUN, what type of storage configuration is behind them is irrelevant. In my case, I use a Dell storage with SAS SSD for the high speed requirements and another Dell storage with HDDs as secondary and backup.