re: Cloud Datacenter Storage Approaches in the Windows Server 2012 era

Yigal Edery [MSFT] — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 16:36:52 GMT

@Martin - you probably wouldn't do it in most cases, but I thought it's worthwhile mentioning it's doable.

Think of this as a migration path - if you're moving to rely on file servers (with low cost storage such as SAS JBODs and Spaces), and you're moving to manage file shares instead of LUNs, but you still have SANs in your datacenter that you want to keep using, it might be easier to you to manage everything the same way.

Also, in terms of fabric, in the case of Fibrechanell SANs, you will now need to lay out the FC fabric only to the File Servers instead of to all your Hyper-V hosts.

If your long term strategy is to have both SANs and File Servers side by side (each for what they're best at), then I agree you will not want to front-end your SANs with a file servers layer.

re: Cloud Datacenter Storage Approaches in the Windows Server 2012 era

Martin Edelius — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 13:22:29 GMT

One thing I'm wondering is why I should connect my Hyper-V hosts, over Ethernet (SMB), to a file server that in turn connects to a SAN, over Ethernet (iSCSI), and not just connect my Hyper-V hosts directly to the SAN, over Ethernet (iSCSI).

Why would I add the file server "layer"?