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What’s New in 2008 R2 – Cluster Shared Volumes

One of the challenges faced with clustered Hyper-V servers today is that for each VHD on a highly available virtual machine, you need to carve out a LUN on your SAN to place that VHD. While it might not be a monumental task to do so, it is a management nightmare. With less than 24 drive letters free you often end up using GUIDs.

Well that changes in Server 2008 R2 with the introduction of Cluster Shared Volumes (CSV). CSV allows you to place multiple VHDs on a single LUN while still looking like it is on its own LUN.

Image courtesy of Microsoft Corporation

There are a number of benefits to CSV including…

provides consistent namespace to all nodes in the cluster
they still use NTFS meaning deployment will note require you to reformat your SAN
also using NTFS means you can use a file system you are familiar with rather than s proprietary file system
no special management tools are required to create and manage the CSV

With all CSV volumes stored in the ClusterStorage root directory, it becomes easy to navigate the file system as well. As an example if the Cluster Storage folder is stored on the S:\ drive then the path to Volume1 would be S:\ClusterStorage\Volume1 and the path to Volume63 would be S:\ClusterStorage\Volume63. No running out of drive letters and no GUIDs!