Hyper-V, SSDs and VHD(X) files?

[smakme7757]

Hi folks.

I'm just curious as to where it would be best to use my SSDs. Should i install the host OS (WS2012) on the SSD or should i put the host OS on a normal platter drive and use the SSDs for the VHD(X) files?

Thanks 🙂

 

[theevilsharpie]

I'm just curious as to where it would be best to use my SSDs.

Ideally, you should be using SSD drives for ALL THE THINGS.

But I'm guessing budgetary concerns prevent that from happening 😛

If your server has an ability to use an SSD for some type of caching or storage tiering where frequently-accessed blocks are stored on the SSD, you should use that.

Otherwise, use the SSD for guest storage. An SSD for your host OS may speed up boot times somewhat, but everything you need for Hyper-V to function will end up loaded into memory after you boot up anyway, so an SSD isn't going to get you much.

 

[stlcardinals]

Use a mixture, that's the beauty of virtualization. Put the OS on an SSD, put your most I/O intensive VMs on SSDs. Put the lower priority VMs on the slower spindles.

 

[smakme7757]

Thanks for the replies people, good reading!

Currently i have 1 SSD for the host OS and 2 in RAID1 for my VMs that need speed and i'm using HDDs for the rest which don't need to do much (email, DNS, DHCP etc...).

I'm in the process of putting together some old parts and some new parts for a new Hyper-V host so i can have a crack at System Center VMM with two hosts.

Although i have enough HDD space and drives i only have the 3 SSDs (i have more, but they are in other machines) in the primary host described above.

So i'm just thinking how i might divvy them up between the two machines.

Seeing as it will give the most benifit to run the VHD(X) files on the SSD i'll take that as my starting point and work from there. It is an advantage to have a quick boot on the host when i need to install updates, but waiting a few more minutes for it to get going really doesn't mean much in the grand scheme of things. At least not in my setup.