{"id":14397,"date":"2013-03-27T13:58:00","date_gmt":"2013-03-27T13:58:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/?p=14397"},"modified":"2013-03-27T13:58:00","modified_gmt":"2013-03-27T13:58:00","slug":"comparing-methods-to-implement-converged-fabrics-for-windows-server-2012-hyper-v","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/?p=14397","title":{"rendered":"Comparing Methods To Implement Converged Fabrics For Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve done a lot of posts over the last year on converged fabrics in Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V, not to mention nearly 100 pages on the topic in the new Hyper-V book<\/a>.  Pretty much all of them center on using PowerShell to create your converged fabric in the management OS of the host itself.  But doing this is just 1 of the 3 ways (that I know of) for creating a converged fabric.  This topic has come up several times in conversation and blog comment over the past month so I thought I\u2019d explore it a bit.<\/p>\n

Using Hyper-V PowerShell in the Management OS<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n

The benefit to implementing converged fabrics in the management OS is that with a pretty simple script, you can implement 1 design across an entire data centre no matter what hardware vendor you choose, or if you have rack servers here and blade servers there.  It\u2019s the same every time, depending on physical NIC designs.  It\u2019s also using technology that\u2019s built into the virtualisation solution.  There is no dependency on additional expensive hardware.  And it\u2019s software defined.  We like software-defined-anything right now because it is flexible.  In theory (and in practice as you\u2019ll soon see) we can change it from a central point when the need arises.  That\u2019s not the case with hardware defined solutions.<\/p>\n

There is a concern for some about dependability.  All this MSFT networking is very new.  Can you build mission critical systems on it?  Some want to take the time to learn it a bit more before deploying it.<\/p>\n

Hardware Network Appliances<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n

An older option that\u2019s been used for quite a while is to use hardware networking appliances to create converged fabrics, such as FlexFabric by HP (and others).  In the case of FlexFabric, with a pair of EUR 18K Virtual Connects you can carve up your 2 * 10 GbE blade server NICs into multiple 1 GbE NICs.  The benefit here is that you do the carving once per blade chassis with up to 8 or 16 blades per chassis.  It\u2019s also a hardware appliance.  That means there is no CPU cost to implementing QoS in the management OS (as minor as that might be).  But importantly, there is a support policy from the hardware vendor \u2013 assuming that you (a) pay for the support and (b) the hardware is not more than 3 years old.<\/p>\n

On the downside, hardware based solutions are very expensive.  That\u2019s an issue when you\u2019re looking at cloud computing and cross-charging, especially for public clouds where every capital expense makes your customer charges less competitive.  You\u2019re also tied to that hardware vendor (thus impacting your future bid pricing) and possibly even that model of server.  And blades are not<\/em> the most cost effective way to rack out a data center \u2013 walk into any substantial modern cloud and I bet you\u2019ll see a hell of a lot more rack 1U and 2U servers than anything else!  The solution is hardware defined.  That makes it inflexible.  You set it per rack using the tools provided by the h\/w manufacturer.  That\u2019s not necessarily the most cloud integrated solution around.  I\u2019d rather have control of the stack form top-to-bottom.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve never used this approach so I don\u2019t know where the NIC teaming is done or if you have to use the not-Microsoft-supported 3rd party software.  In the end, the networking will probably appear like it did in W2008 R2 Hyper-V.<\/p>\n

VMM 2012 SP1 Logical Switch<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n

There is a third option \u2026 which is related to a blog comment I got recently.  You can deploy a software defined converged fabric from System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager SP1 (VMM 2012 SP1).  Instead of deploying the WS2012 Hyper-V converged fabric from within the management OS, you create and deploy a logical switch from VMM.  You can do this in two ways:<\/p>\n