using Differencing Disk hyper v test lab

rockstar81

I plan on using a Samsung 256GB SSD for my lab (it has fast read and write - over 500mb and 100l iops).

the plan would be to use Server 2012 with hyper v as the host.

I would then create a read only parent VM Server 2012 (I hope i am using right terminogly as not really studied hyper v yet).


the following VMs would be created using Differencing Disk and would be like this


Server 2012 - DC1
Server 2012 - DC2
Server 2012 - SCCM 12 SP1
Server 2012 - Exchange 2013
Server 2012 - WSUS
Server 2012 - Lync 2013
Server 2012 - SQL 2012

I am hoping that be using Differencing Disk the above should fit on the one disk - i know its a lot to run but hoping the SSD will cope and its just for a testing lab to learn/study

any feedback most welcome

pumbaa_g

It will be really really slow but should be doable* (Depends on the Hardware), there is a guy who had a similar approach for a Vmware Lab setup ESX Virtualization
Only concern will be the IO which will be a bottleneck as you are running SQL/Exchange/WSUS/DC together. Most Virtual environment run similar workloads
In the end you will never know until you try, and who knows who may learn something in the process

rockstar81

thank you, the spec of the machine will be an i7 with 32gb of ram, i may add another SSD if needed.

I have noticed on some labs people add multiple network cards - what is advantage to having more physcial network cards over virtual network cards?