Chapter 13. SMB storage

A new capability for Hyper-V in Windows Server 2012 is the ability to store virtual machine files on a file share on a network file server. This capability is only possible because of enhancements in version 3.0 of the Server Message Block (SMB) file-sharing protocol introduced in Windows Server 2012. All types of virtual machine files can be stored on SMB 3.0 shares, including:

  • Virtual machine configuration files

  • Virtual hard disk files

  • Virtual machine snapshots

Advantages of this new approach include the ability to leverage your existing converged networking infrastructure and reduced CapEx and OpEx costs due to no longer needing specialized storage hardware and expertise.

In this section Thomas Roettinger demonstrates how ...

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