Architect at a tech consulting company with 51-200 employees

Aug 22, 2016

What is Hyper-V over SMB?

Hyper-V over SMB

With the release of Windows Server 2012 Microsoft offers a new way to store Hyper-V Virtual Machine on a shared storage. In Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V Microsoft did only offer block-based shared-storage like Fiber channel or iSCSI. With Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V Microsoft allows you to used file-based storage to run Hyper-V Virtual Machine from via the new SMB 3.0 protocol. This means Hyper-V over SMB allows you to store virtual machines on a SMB file share. In the past years I did a lot of Hyper-V implementations working with iSCSI or Fiber channel storage, and I am really happy with the new possibilities SMB 3.0 offers.

The common problem of block storage is that the Hyper-V host has to handle the storage connection. That means if you use iSCSI or fiber channel you have to configure the connection to the storage on the Hyper-V host for example multipath, iSCSI initiator or DSM software. With Hyper-V over SMB you don’t have to configure anything special because SMB 3.0 is built-in to Windows and supporting features like SMB Multichannel are activated and used by default. Of course you have to do some design considerations but this is much less complex than an iSCSI or Fiber Channel implementation.

How did they make it work

Name: Hyper-V
Brand: Microsoft
Rating: 4.0 (145 reviews)

The first thing which was important was speed. SMB 3.0 offers a huge performance increase over the SMB 2.x protocol and you totally have to think about it in a different way. There are also a lot of other features like SMB Direct (RDMA), SMB Multichannel or Transparent Failover and many more which help in terms of performance, security and availability, but more on this supporting features in the next post.
Hyper-V over SMB Multichannel

Why Hyper-V over SMB?

Well I already mentioned a lot of reasons why you should use Hyper-V over SMB, but if you think about it there are there main reasons why you should use it.

Costs – Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V allows you to build cluster up to 64 nodes and if you build a clusters this size with fiber channel storage this will be quiet an investment in terms of fiber channel hardware such as HBAs, Switches and cables. By using Hyper-V over SMB you can reduce cost for infrastructure dramatically. Sure maybe you have already invested in a fiber channel storage and a fiber channel infrastructure and you don’t have to change that. For example if you have 100 Hyper-V hosts you may have about 200 HBAs and you also need fiber channel switches. What you could do with Hyper-V over SMB, you could create a Scale-Out File Server Cluster with 8 nodes which are attached to the fiber channel and present the storage to the Hyper-V hosts by using a SMB file share. This would save you a lot money.

Flexibility – Another point which I already mentioned is flexibility. By using Hyper-V over SMB you are removing the Storage dependency from the Hyper-V host and add the storage configuration to the Virtual Machine. In this case you don’t have to configure zoning or iSCSI initiators which is making life for Virtualization Administrators much easier. Here are two examples how IT teams can reduce complexity by using Hyper-V over SMB. First in small IT departments you may not have a dedicated storage team and if you have to add an new Hyper-V host or if you have to reconfigure your storage this can be a lot of difficult work for some people who haven’t much experience with the storage. In enterprise scenario you may have a dedicated Storage and a dedicated Virtualization team and in the most cases they have to work really closely together. For example if the Virtualization team adds another Hyper-V host, the Storage team has to configure the Storage for the host on the Storage site. If the Storage team makes changes to the Storage the Virtualization team eventually has to make changes to the Hyper-V hosts. This dependencies can be reduced by adding a layer between Storage and the Hypervisors and in this case this could be a Scale-Out File Server.

Technology – The third point in my list is technology. Microsoft is not really mention this point but since I have worked with different options like iSCSI, fiber channel or SMB I am a huge fan of SMB 3.0. Fiber channel is a great but expensive technology and people who have worked with iSCSI know that there can be a lot of issues in terms of performance. SMB 3.0 has some great supporting features which can help you increase performance, RDMA which is a technology which can increase networking performance by multiple times and SMB Multichannel which allows you to use multiple network adapters for failover and load balancing are working very well and let you make the most out of your hardware. Another part can be security if you think about encrypting iSCSI networks via IPsec you know that this can be something complex, with SMB Encryption there is a very easy solution for that on the SMB scenario.

I hope I could give you a quick introduction to Hyper-V over SMB and why it’s a good idea consider this in your deployment plans. In the next post I will quickly summarize the supporting features in SMB 3.0.

Disclosure: The company I work for is a Microsft Partner

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

it_user810477IT Consultant at a tech services company with 1-10 employees

Report as inappropriate

Jul 5, 2018

This is a great budget friendly solution for companies who are looking to reduce costs associated with storage hardware and software and still want to maintain speedy experience. Many people think that Hyper-V over SMB will result in lower VM performance, however, with the advent of RDMA and SSD based disks, the performance of this solution is very much comparable to that of FC.

See all 3 comments

it_user474570

CEO at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

Aug 8, 2016

Download

Setup on a DAS can split functions to as many servers as needed improved backups and uptime.

What is most valuable?

Quick boots
Fast up time and install

How has it helped my organization?

Setup on a DAS can split functions to as many servers as needed improved backups and uptime.

What needs improvement?

Cannot copy paste within the app
Some bugs were not fixable and I had to reinstall core OS

For how long have I used the solution?

3 Years

What was my experience with deployment of the solution?

How are customer service and technical support?

Customer Service:

Good

Technical Support:

Good

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

VMware

How was the initial setup?

Straightforward

What about the implementation team?

In-house

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

Yes

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

Buyer's Guide

Hyper-V

January 2026

Free Report: Hyper-V Reviews and More

Learn what your peers think about Hyper-V. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: January 2026.

DOWNLOAD NOW

881,733 professionals have used our research since 2012.

it_user345411

IT Administrator at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

May 24, 2016

Download

The main improvement to our organization is its scalability and the ability to support our system by running our applications simultaneously.

Valuable Features

It's scalable and stable. Working on Hyper-V is a wonderful experience. It supports our systems in parallel, providing us results that meet our needs. Moreover, providing more and more new features everyday such as Live Migration, CSV and so on.

Also, assigning physical NICs to each VM is wonderful with Hyper-V, as it distributes load and performs well. Otherwise, all VMs bottleneck to a virtual switch which is bound to just one physical NIC.

Improvements to My Organization

The main improvement to our organization is its scalability and the ability to support our system by running our applications simultaneously. It ultimately helps us with customer satisfactions and productivity, Failover clustering is another amazing benefit to my organization as we have dramatically reduced the downtime.

Room for Improvement

The networking component of the setup needs to be less complex.I have one physical server with four built in LAN ports (NIC1, NIC2, NIC3 & NIC4) and I want three more VMs on it. In order to distribute the traffic load, I want to assign one NIC to each VM with one for the physical server. This means whenever L needs remote access for management purpose it will utilize NIC4, but this needs to be simpler to setup.

Use of Solution

I've used it for more than two years.

Deployment Issues

We have four physical cards in a Poweredge R710 server with three VMs on it. We have assigned one NIC to each VM, with one for management purposes and remote access.

Stability Issues

Initially we were using only one NIC for all VMs, physical servers, and for remote purposes as well. After assigning one NIC to each machine, the performance improved and is now excellent and reliable.

Scalability Issues

We've scaled sufficiently.

Customer Service and Technical Support

Customer Service:

8/10

Technical Support:

8/10

Initial Setup

The initial setup and configuration is not too complex, but completing the networking part is a bit complex.

Implementation Team

All implementation was done in-house.

Other Advice

You should evaluate this product as it’s very easy to manage.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

it_user327432

Technical Support Specialist at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees

Mar 13, 2016

Download

I'm able to save space by running multiple Operating Systems and Services on only one physical device, but I wish importing/exporting were more robust and more user-friendly.

What is most valuable?

It's free minus initial licensing for the OS. You can centrally manage multiple Hyper-V hosts rather easy with no extra licensing fees vs VMware vCenter. Having used both I still have a preference for VMware (especially for P2V situations), but for home/small offices Hyper-V is a great alternative. Hyper-V is included in Windows 8 and Windows 10 with minimal loss to functionality (mainly no Hyper-V replica).

How has it helped my organization?

I use this in my home lab, and I am able to save space by running multiple Operating Systems and Services on only one physical device.

What needs improvement?

I have not gotten to configure virtual SANs, but I wish there were more solutions for storage options. Virtual SANs aside, Server 2012R2 does provide a rather easy way to setup iSCSI targets with local storage. I wish importing/exporting were more robust and more user-friendly. Creating templates would be nice. I will say Hyper-V replica for clustering/failover is pretty sweet. P2V situations are a little more convoluted than with VMware, but still relatively easy. You just have to create a VHD image of the physical machine then attach it to a new virtual machine.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've used it for one or two years.

What was my experience with deployment of the solution?

No issues encountered.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

No issues encountered.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

I run an i7 quad core with a total of 8 processing threads and 24GB of RAM. I have eight VMs on a Hyper-V host, but not all run at the same time. The most I’ve had run is five, and everything ran pretty smoothly.

How are customer service and technical support?

Technical support is very limited. Knowledge-base articles on TechNet and public forums are all that is really available.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

This is my first enterprise deployment of a virtual machine infrastructure. I used Hyper-V because it was already on my host OS.

How was the initial setup?

Deployment is easy, enable the feature using the wizard, reboot, and access the management console to start making VMs. Implementation is easy, if you can’t set it up yourself, you don’t belong in IT.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

It's free, minus the license for the host OS.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

I like VMware ESXi, I am aware they offer a free version as well. When I have time and resources, I would like to implement a new infrastructure using that. I’m very familiar with ESXi because we use that in our work infrastructure.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

it_user327432Technical Support Specialist at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees

Report as inappropriate

Mar 13, 2016

Sorry I have not had time to comment, I stay rather busy at my job and studies.

First, a little about my background.

I've only been in the IT field professionally for almost 2 years as of this comment. I graduated in May of 2013 with two Associate Degrees; Computer Network Management and Computer Network Engineering. I obtained my role of a Technical Support Specialist back in April of 2014, I started out with basic help desk support and quickly got thrown into the deep end of server management, virtualization, networking, and SAN technologies without warning or support. I may not be very experienced by most tech standards, but I certainly have a talent and aptitude for this career path. I have quite a few experienced techs who will attest to my abilities. My company's IT department consists of me and my boss. My boss handles high level infrastructure needs and planning where as my jobs consists of everything under the sun any my job constantly pushes my boundaries of experience.

I use Hyper-V at home to basically study for MCSA/MCSE certifications. I setup an AD infrastructure, DHCP, DNS, WDS, NPS, RRAS, as well as many other services and I have a virtual machine just for VPN connections to my office. I constantly use snapshots to test new services and I have a base VM that I exported and I copy when I need to setup a new one.

I was asked to write a review on Hyper-V so I did. I work with many software developers and I have turned them on to Hyper-V for home use on several occasions and have yet to hear anything bad about it. I do have a preference to VMware ESX and if asked to write a review on that, I would sing it praises. But as for Hyper-V goes, I think that it is viable alternative to VMware and best suited for home or small to medium business use, larger business could also use and would be complimented very well with the whole SCCM application suite.

See all 4 comments

it_user216687

Microsoft System Engineer with 1,001-5,000 employees

Aug 13, 2015

Download

You can move from server to server without downtime with Live Migration in a VM.

Valuable Features:

1. Improved Windows stability

2. Hyper-V stability

3. Live migration

4. Enhanced session mode

5. Clustering

Improvements to My Organization:

Enhanced Session Mode is a feature thats allow you to copy and past inside the virtual machine.

Live Migration in a virtual machine where you can move across your Hyper-V physical servers with or without user interaction, and in a virtual machine you can move from server to server without downtime.

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer. My company integrates Microsoft solutions for our customers.

it_user221874

Manager IT at a energy/utilities company with 501-1,000 employees

Jul 14, 2015

Download

I have less down time in case of a disaster and have saved on hardware and electricity costs.

Valuable Features:

- One-window management of servers

- Less down time in case of a disaster

- Easy to use and manage

Improvements to My Organization:

After deploying this, we have saved hardware and electricity costs.

Room for Improvement:

Not yet rectified.

Use of Solution:

I've used this technology since 2010. It is a really amazing product. By shifting almost my all physical servers into one Box "Host Machine", I am relaxed now.

Deployment Issues:

Not yet

What needs improvement?

They need to make the initial configuration more straightforward, as the networking part is confusing.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've used it for three years.

What was my experience with deployment of the solution?

I find out that for smaller shops, that have under 50VMs with a 1gb network, you don't need separate iSCSI traffic for your data. I know that all the best practices tell you to separate the traffic, but what I am seeing, is a much better Hyper-V performance if you keep ISCSI traffic with your data traffic. If you can use CIFS instead of the iSCSI, go with CIFS, HyperV loves CIFS.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

We did have problems, and you need to make sure that the LUNs have enough space. If you run out of space, you will need to spend a few hours to bring the VMs up.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

If you know what you are doing, you can automate the deployment of a new Hyper-V host with a PXE boot and VMM.

How are customer service and technical support?

Customer Service:

5/10.

Technical Support:

It's 5/10 as it is like a lotto, you never know who you will get on other side. Sometimes you get an expert, and sometimes you get a beginner.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We previously used VMware. The primary reason to switch to Hyper-V was the cost, as Hyper-V is for free.

How was the initial setup?

The networking part is confusing for the beginners

What about the implementation team?

We did it in-house.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Hyper-V is free, however if you build clusters, you should get a manager to centralize the management. If you are big enough and you have some money, I strongly recommend System Center, which includes VMM and other great tools like Orchestrator. You can automate building your VMs and even your application tiers. Also with VMM, you can automate spinning up new Hyper-V hosts with PXE boot. I configured, I used it, and it works perfectly.

If you are small shop go with a third party Hyper-V manager like 5nine. It is cheap, they even have a free version, and also a converter from VMware is free. I am using it right now and it works great. It includes alerting.

If for some reason you cant get either, you can manage your clusters directly from fail over cluster manager. It is just more manual work than with the tools above.

What other advice do I have?

For the cost, it has almost the same features as VMware. If you are a Microsoft shop, then get Hyper-V with System Center to connect to Windows Azure and you are all set.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

it_user240039

Lead Architect at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees

May 17, 2015

Not equal or superior to VMware’s ESXi

“We are 4x cheaper with better technology versus VMware.”

I’ve been fairly open in my opinion against the latest round of Microsoft FUD coming out of their Worldwide Partner Conference this week but I felt strongly enough by the utter crap coming out of their mouths to respond in a post.

It’s not so much about the claim to be 4x cheaper than the VMware Cloud Suite…but more the outright incorrect claims that their technology is somehow superior to that of VMware’s.

I’ve found myself in the position to have been exposed to both Hyper-V and ESXi (not counting the Management and Orchestration suites) and in fact I cut my teeth in the Virtualization world on Hyper-V…so unlike others out there who see things only through the rose colored glasses Microsoft seem to sew onto peoples faces… I go by a real world operational perspective that’s not blinkered.

So here it is…Microsoft Hyper-V is not the equal or superior to VMware’s ESXi! And rather than go through feature by feature..In the interest of keeping this post short and to the point, I would challenge anybody to sit someone who has had zero exposure to the Virtualization market to evaluate both Hyper-V and ESXi side by side…without bias or without prejudice there is no doubt in anyone's mind that no logical person would choose Hyper-V as the better hypervisor platform over ESXi. To reinforce that…ESXi will come out on top.

It’s that simple!

Of course I now fall firmly with the side of VMware and some will argue that my own view is blurred but I can tell you that my current opinions are based on fact and experience…not desperate attempts to discredit otherwise far far superior technology…but then again…Microsoft have made a habit of this so it doesn’t surprise me.

Kevin Turner you are a disgrace!

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

it_user361485Product Engineer at a recruiting/HR firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

Report as inappropriate

Dec 24, 2015

To keep it short; when working with VMM I found some tasks to be too cumbersome compared to vSphere and vCenter. Setting access rights was a nightmare in VMM, a dream in ESXi and vCenter. However, I liked the IP pools concept in VMM. vCenter also has IP pools, but they are designed for usage with virtual appliances and can't as easily be used for auto assigning static IP-adresses to auto-deployed virtual machines like in VMM. Automation worked better with VMM and Microsofts Orhestrator, then with Microsofts Orhestrator and VMWare.

See all 6 comments