One of the biggest challenges I had when writing Mastering Hyper-V Deployment was choosing the ordering of the chapters. Some stuff needs to be understood before moving on. In the end I ordered it like a typical deployment. But I did make it clear that certain things needed to be considered.
One of the things I stressed was the storage. The choice of product, design, and implementation will affect what you can do, the performance, and stability. It must be considered as a central component of the entire implementation. Failure to do so will lead to project failure, maybe not today, but maybe 6-12 months down the road.
Bound to this, because of CSV and Redirected I/O, is backup. Host level backup will affect network performance. Huge CSVs being backed up will stress the CSV network and the CSV coordinator’s storage link. This means you need to consider sizing of CSVs and design backup protection groups accordingly. Hardware based VSS snapshots relieve this substantially.
Virtualisation is a foundation. We don’t build the roof of a house without doing the work on what is underneath. Identify your overall server objectives, such as DR or private cloud, and then do a holistic design. Guess what – you’re going to have to talk to non-techies (the business) to figure out how to steer your design and to define those objects. Have fun!