How to create a private cloud step by step with System Center part 7: Adding our hosts

Hi all, thanks for being so supportive with this series, I’m really glad I can help and your support is keeping me going at a fast pace to deliver to you this series of posts.

Now let’s get to the fun technical part, we will be adding 3 hosts, two of them doesn’t even have Hyper-V installed, so we will do this from the SCVMM Console and add our storage to SCVMM

Prework:

• Install Windows Server 2012 R2 Datacenter in my 2 nodes.
• Add them to your domain.
• Connect them to my private lab network, as shown in my 3rd post of the series.
• Enable MPIO.
• Start the iSCSI initiator, just by hitting the windows key and searching for iSCSI and open it.
• You will need to install the storage provider in your storage server with this roles and features:

• And install MPIO.

Adding the servers:

• Go to the console and the Fabric Tab.
• Right Click in the All Hosts Folder under Servers.
• Select Create a Host Group and name it Standalone.
• Repeat the process to create a Clusters group.
• Right click in your Standalone group and Add Hyper-V Hosts and Clusters.
• Select Windows Server computers in a trusted Active Directory domain and click Next.
• Create and select your VMMaction Run As Account from browse and click next.
• Remember to add as local admin your VMMaction account, this will be the one we use to manage the servers.
• Fill in your Storage computer name and click Next.
• Check the box to select your server and click Next.
• In the Host Setting select your Standalone host group and click Next.
• Finish and check the Jobs for success.
• Repeat this steps for node1 and node2 computers.

Creating the Storage Pools. I decided to go with 2 Storage Pools 1 for SSD and another for HDD, so let’s create them in the Storage server.

• Go to your Storage server and open server manager.
• Select File and Storage Services from the left pane.
• Select Storage Pools.
• In the right upper corner click tasks and New Storage Pool.
• Click Next.
• Name it, mine are Fast for SSD, and Slow for HDD, click Next.
• Select the disks you want to add to the pool and click Next.
• Create.
• Repeat for all the pools you need.
• Now go back to Storage Pool and from the tasks of virtual disks, select New Virtual Disk.
• Click Next.
• Select your storage pool and click Next.
• Give it a descriptive name, click Next.
• Select the type of layout by checking the description, I’m using simple for my lab, click Next.
• Select Fixed and click Next.
• Select the max size or the amount you want to assign, click Next.
• Clock Create.
• Go through the new volume wizard with all the defaults just changing the volume name.

We have all our storage configuration in place.

Now let’s add the storage to SCVMM:

• Go to your SCVMM Server and open the Console.
• Select the fabric tab, right click in File Servers under Storage and Add Storage Devices.
• Select Windows-based file server, click Next.
• Fill in your storage server name and select your VMMaction account from browse, and click Next.
• Wait for the discovery and click Next.
• select your Storage Device and click Next.
• Finish.
• Now right click providers and Add Storage Devices.
• Select SAN and NAS devices discovered and managed by a SMI-S provider, click Next.
• Select SMI-S WMI, fill in your storage server name and select your VMMaction account.
• Wait for the discovery and select the device, click next.
• Select the units for the virtual disks you created.
• Create a classification like Gold and another like Silver, to differentiate our fast ssd pool from the HDD one.
• Finish.

In the next post we will build the cluster from the console too, that’s really cool right?

Comments

• Anonymous
  September 03, 2014
  I’m adding an index post so it’s easier for you to browse through this series of posts. How to create