LUN multiprotocol type Hyper-V vs 2008 or later

[ESG_NetApp_User]

Hello All

We just got a NetApp FAS 2650 and just started to configure it. We are thinking to create VHDs and use them as shares. We were planning to create VHDs around 5-6 TB each but found this article https://library.netapp.com/ecmdocs/ECMP1307349/html/GUID-C39A9C4A-3ACB-43B5-A500-00EDE6075B7D.html . According to this, if we use Hyper-V as LUN multiprotocol, we will have to partition the VHDs with MBR which restricts our VHD size to 2TB and it mentions that VHDs using GPT are not supported. 

So, if we use 2008 or later Mulitprotocol, what are the restrictions? Would we still be able to create VHDs? And would those VHDs would give optimum performance? What is the difference between both the protocols?

Thanks in Advance.

[AlexDawson]

Hi there,

The LUN types now mostly relate to pre-padding to prevent misaligned IO.

The page you have found refers preventing that for VMs running inside VHDs - not the LUNs that are formatted as NTFS and used to store the VHDs themselves. The GPT restriction is for the guest VMs running Win2K or Win2K3, not the main datastores themselves.

If you are using iSCSI or FC from a NetApp system to a Windows Server to store VHDs, use the Hyper-V LUN type.

However, we also support using SMB3 for shares that store VHDs - which can enable easy access to NetApp Snapshots. Further, if you're just creating VMs to create fileshares on, you can always just connect your clients directly to the NetApp via SMB also.

Hope this helps clear things up