Using an SMB Path as a Cluster Shared Volume for Hyper-V Cluster

[OceaneEmmerich]

Wondering if this is possible or if I am just way off base.

3 server configuration:
2 x HyperV Hosts (nearly identical)
1 x Storage server with an HP Disk Enclosure attached

Here's how I Have it set up right now:
LAN network between all hosts (10.10.200.x)
Cluster Network between the two hosts (10.10.102.x network)
Storage Network between all hosts (10.10.101.x)

This allows me to use SMB3 Multipathing -- essentially this is the closest I can get to a SAN without purchasing a SAN.

VMs run fine on Cluster node 1, but when I tried to move a VM from Node 1 to Node 2, it simply doesn't show up.
I then tried to manually import the VM to Node 2 and saw this in the cluster event logs:

Cluster resource 'Virtual Machine Configuration AZCC-EX02' of type 'Virtual Machine Configuration' in clustered role 'AZCC-EX02' failed. The error code was '0xb7' ('Cannot create a file when that file already exists.').

My thought is that since I never set up a Cluster Shared Volume up, only one node can control specific VMs and it's causing a problem

Which leads me to my question: Can I configure NAS space (for intents and purposes, the storage server is a NAS) as a Cluster Shared Volume? How do I get it to show up in the Failover Cluster Manager as an "available disk"?

[yaroslav (staff)]

You are right: You need cluster storage.
Unlike file-level protocols used in NAS, iSCSI is a block-level protocol and it cannot arbiter read-write access to an iSCSI device connected to multiple servers. In order to provide the access to one device from multiple servers, the device needs to have a clustered file system. While VMFS is a clustered file system and no additional actions should be done to see updated data on datastore, iSCSI storage, connected to the nodes in a Microsoft failover cluster should be managed by the cluster and formatted as CSVFS if used as Cluster Shared Volume (CSV). Such an approach allows to share single storage device between the nodes in the cluster and get updated data on them.

Also, I'd suggest trialing the solution with one of our techs and booking a demo https://www.starwindsoftware.com/v17-request-live-demo.

[OceaneEmmerich]

You are right: You need cluster storage.
Unlike file-level protocols used in NAS, iSCSI is a block-level protocol and it cannot arbiter read-write access to an iSCSI device connected to multiple servers. In order to provide the access to one device from multiple servers, the device needs to have a clustered file system. While VMFS is a clustered file system and no additional actions should be done to see updated data on datastore, iSCSI storage, connected to the nodes in a Microsoft failover cluster should be managed by the cluster and formatted as CSVFS if used as Cluster Shared Volume (CSV). Such an approach allows to share single storage device between the nodes in the cluster and get updated data on them.

Also, I'd suggest trialing the solution with one of our techs and booking a demo https://www.starwindsoftware.com/v17-request-live-demoSolitaired.

The information you share is very useful, thank you.

[yaroslav (staff)]

You are welcome!