Tunneling SCSI over SMB: Shared VHDX files for Guest Clustering in Windows Server 2012 R2

Windows Server Failover Clustering is a well-established technology for increasing application availability in the Microsoft platform. For Hyper-V virtualized workloads, you can also create a Failover Cluster comprised of a set of virtual machines and some shared storage in the form of iSCSI LUNs, virtual Fibre Channel LUNs or SMB file shares. In this session, we’ll start by describing the overall Guest Clustering scenario and then dive into the new Windows Server 2012 R2 option to use Shared VHDX files. We’ll then introduce the “Remote Shared Virtual Hard Disk Protocol” (the new protocol behind the Shared VHDX feature) and explain how this protocol allows SCSI commands to be tunneled over the SMB protocol. We’ll also cover how non-Windows SMB implementations can offer the Shared VHDX capability via this new protocol.

Learning Objectives

Review the scenarios and requirements for guest high availability using Windows Server Failover Clustering inside a virtual machine
Describe the new Shared VHDX feature in Windows Server 2012 R2 for Guest Clustering
Explain how the Remote Shared Virtual Hard Disk Protocol allows SCSI commands to be tunneled over the SMB protocol