Qatar Airways Cloud IaaS Project

Hyper-V Design Blueprint

 Confidential Hyper-V Design Blueprint Cloud IaaS Project

Contents
1. Version Control........................................................................................................................................ 3
2. Document Distribution List....................................................................................................................... 3
3. Introduction.............................................................................................................................................. 4
4. Data Center Overview............................................................................................................................. 4
5. Compute Infrastructure Tiers summary................................................................................................... 4
6. High Level Hyper-V failover cluster Architecture......................................................................................5
7. Hyper-V host network connection............................................................................................................ 6
8. Hyper-V Failover Cluster......................................................................................................................... 7
8.1 Hyper-V Configuration Summary........................................................................................................................ 8
8.2 Hyper-V FOC in TIER 0/1:.................................................................................................................................. 8
8.3 Hyper-V FOC in TIER 2:..................................................................................................................................... 9
8.4 Hyper-V FOC in TIER 3:................................................................................................................................... 10

9. System Center Virtual machine manager.............................................................................................. 11

10. System Center Operations Manager................................................................................................... 12
11. Integration - Hyper-V and Cisco ACI.................................................................................................... 12
12. Assumptions........................................................................................................................................ 14

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1. VERSION CONTROL
Created/ Changed
Version Description Status Created/ Changed By
Date
1.0 Hyper-V Design Blueprint Draft Syed Ali Imam Zaidi November 01, 2020
1.1
1.2
1.2
1.3

2. DOCUMENT DISTRIBUTION LIST

Num Designation Organization/ Department Purpose

1.
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4.

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3. INTRODUCTION
This document serves as a design blueprint document for Hyper-V architecture for Qatar Airways. It discusses various
solution components and their roles.

4. DATA CENTER OVERVIEW

Qatar Airways uses Ooredoo Data Centers for hosting their infrastructure.
▶ Number of Data Centers = 2
 Ooredoo QDC 2
 Ooredoo QDC 5
▶ HA Zones per data center = 2
 East Zone
 West Zone
▶ Dedicated Management Zone per DC

5. COMPUTE INFRASTRUCTURE TIERS SUMMARY

▶ Tier 0/1 – Metro High Availability
 N+M Clustering
 Dual Zone
 VMs run in a preferred zone but can automatically failover or live migrate to another zone in DC
 Disaster Recovery - Manual failover to remote region
▶ Tier 2 – Selective DR
 N+M Clustering
 Single Zone

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 VMs can only failover between cluster nodes

 Disaster Recovery – Selected LUN/Datastore level replication to other DC with manual failover
 Failover is Manual: datastores are mounted on another compute cluster (in other DC) and VMs are
restarted.
▶ Tier 3 – Local HA within Zone
 N+1 Clustering
 Single Zone
 VMs can failover between cluster nodes
 RAID protection
 No DR

6. HIGH LEVEL HYPER-V FAILOVER CLUSTER ARCHITECTURE

Solution components:
▶ Active Directory and DNS
Highly available active directory and DNS servers are required for any critical network. They act as a backbone for
infrastructure components and allows administrators to manage permissions and access to network resources. It
is recommended to have at least one domain controller as physical and others can be virtualized.

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To configure failover cluster, active directory and DNS needs to be configured first. Since QA is already having
AD and DNS setup for their existing environment hence, we will leverage them during failover cluster setup.
▶ Windows update and patch management
Windows update and patch management system is a critical component. QA will use their existing tools to apply
security updates and patches to the Hyper-V infrastructure.
▶ Hypervisors – Hyper-V Hosts
Windows Server 2019 will be installed and configured as Hyper-V hosts for hosting infrastructure workloads. They
will be added to failover cluster for high availability.
▶ Hyper-V Management - SCVMM
Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) will act as the management tool to manage Hyper-V
hosts and clusters. It provides a unified management experience across on-premises, service provider, and the
Azure cloud. It provisions and manages the resources needed to create and deploy virtual machines and services
to private clouds.
QA existing SCVMM server will be used to manage the new Hyper-V environment.
▶ Storage – FC based storage
Hyper-V compute nodes connect to Dell EMC Power MAX block storage through SAN switches within the same
HA zone.

7. HYPER-V HOST NETWORK CONNECTION

Each Hyper-V Host has the following network connections:
▶ 1 Gbps for OOB management
▶ 2 x 25 Gbps for Network connectivity. Interfaces will be teamed for high availability and fault tolerance.
▶ 2 x 36 Gbps HBA’s for SAN connectivity

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8. HYPER-V FAILOVER CLUSTER

Failover Clustering works alongside Hyper-V to protect virtual machines and uses its own management interface, aptly
named “Failover Cluster Manager”. To manage many servers or cluster environment SCVMM is utilized and we will use
this.
As per Hyper-V networking best practices it is recommended to use the following separate networks for each type of
traffic: Actual number will be finalized during LLD phase.

- Management network
This network type is used for managing Hyper-V hosts and virtual machines residing on those hosts.

- CSV (Cluster Shared Volume) or Heartbeat network

CSV traffic is usually minimal but is used for standard cluster communications. Heartbeat traffic is light but
latency-sensitive and requires that each component of a cluster is healthy and online. If there is no dedicated
network for sending heartbeats, then heartbeats may be delayed or even lost when large amount of data is
transferred (for example, copying files over network) and a cluster can fail after losing quorum.

- VM Live Migration network. The VM migration process requires enough bandwidth to complete migration tasks
quickly and devoid of errors, especially if a VM is running. Large chunks of memory must be copied as quickly as
possible.

- VM network.
This network carries the most important virtual machine traffic from the side of Hyper-V networking.

Hyper-V failover cluster will be configured for Tier 0/1, Tier 2, and Tier 3 systems.

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8.1 HYPER-V CONFIGURATION SUMMARY

▶ Hyper-V failover cluster will be configured with nodes in EAST and WEST zones.
▶ Each zone high availability will be configured by specifying “Preferred Owners” for VM’s.
▶ VM’s can failover to any other cluster node in the same zone as far as enough capacity is available to
host VM load.
▶ VM’s will failover to the other zone if one zone is unavailable.
▶ Load will be distributed 50/50 between zones.
▶ For Tier 0/1, entire datastore will be replicated to the other DC and disaster recovery will be manual.
▶ For Tier 2, selected LUNs or datastore will be replicated based on requirement and disaster recovery will
be manual.
▶ Tier 3 load will run in HV failover cluster in single zone per DC.
▶ For Tier 3, no disaster recovery will be available.

8.2 HYPER-V FOC IN TIER 0/1:

▶ Hyper-V failover cluster spans overs East and West zone in each DC.
▶ VMs run in a preferred zone but can automatically failover or live migrate to another zone, utilizing
“Preferred Owner” configuration.
▶ Data is synchronously mirrored between the two zones.
▶ Data is asynchronously replicated to the other corresponding zone in other DC for disaster recovery.
▶ DR will have active cluster in other DC and Datastore will be manually mounted in case of DR.
▶ Workload will be split 50/50 between the two zones.

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8.3 HYPER-V FOC IN TIER 2:

▶ Separate Hyper-V failover cluster exists in East and West zones in each DC.
▶ VMs can automatically failover or live migrate to other cluster nodes.
▶ Data is asynchronously replicated to the corresponding zone in other DC for disaster recovery.
▶ Data replication will be on selected LUN’s or entire datastore based on requirements.
▶ DR will have active cluster and Datastore will be manually mounted in case of DR.

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8.4 HYPER-V FOC IN TIER 3:

▶ Clusters are made of 2 AG’s from East and West zones of the same region.
▶ Only 1 spare node will be allocated to the whole cluster.
▶ VMs can be distributed across zones and can failover if needed.
▶ By default, data is not replicated across East and West and it is not replicated to DR.

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9. SYSTEM CENTER VIRTUAL MACHINE MANAGER

Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) provides the centralized management and control for Hyper-
V hosts and clusters. It simplifies the administration, configuration, and management of Windows Server Hyper-V
environments by bringing all the tools, management, and administration of Hyper-V hosts and clusters under a single
management tool.
SCVMM is composed of following major components.
▶ VMM console
▶ VMM management server
▶ Database
▶ VMM library
We will use QA existing SCVMM system for managing Hyper-V environment. As per best practice it is recommended to
have a highly available SCVMM infrastructure in place as show in below diagram:

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10. SYSTEM CENTER OPERATIONS MANAGER

Microsoft Systems Center Operations Manager provides infrastructure monitoring, helps ensure the predictable
performance and availability of vital applications, and offers comprehensive monitoring for datacenter and cloud, both
private and public.
QA existing SCOM server will be utilized as the monitoring solution for Hyper-V environment.

11. INTEGRATION - HYPER-V AND CISCO ACI

Cisco ACI is a next-generation data center fabric infrastructure designed to meet today’s rapidly changing business
requirements. Cisco Application Policy Infrastructure Controller (APIC) is the main architectural component of the Cisco
ACI integration with the Microsoft Hyper-V virtual environment. It is the unified point of automation and management for
the Cisco ACI fabric, policy enforcement, and health monitoring for both the physical and virtual environments.
The Cisco APIC integrates with a Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) instance to transparently
extend the Cisco ACI policy framework to Microsoft Hyper-V workloads. SCVMM enables communication between ACI
and SCVMM for network management, once integrated with Cisco ACI.

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Below figure shows a representative topology of System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) deployment with
Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) fabric.

Cisco ACI and SCVMM compatibility matrix

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12. ASSUMPTIONS
1. We assumed that QA would provide the desired operating system licenses (Windows Server 2016/2019) to
configure Hyper-V environment.
2. We assumed that QA would use their existing infrastructure components for managing Hyper-V environment (AD,
DNS, Antivirus, Windows update servers, SCOM etc.) and will be responsible for their configuration.

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