Cluster Shared Volumes: When Will You Copy VHDs to a LUN?

Coming in via Twitter, @RickSheikh asks me the question “@concentratdgreg Hi Greg.  Good refresher on CSV node from http://bit.ly/9RFIiX.  At what point do you have a need to copy VHDs to a LUN ?” Great question, because the reality is that you shouldn’t find yourself using this method all that often.  Most CSV volume operations occur within one of Hyper-V’s available tools, such as the Hyper-V Manager or System Center VMM.  That said, there is the occasional time when a direct copy may be necessary. Let me give you a few use cases.  Comment below if you know of others: Moving a VM from a completely different Hyper-V environment to this one, such as test/dev to production. Moving a “golden image”/”reference image” VM from a staging environment to production (or, vice versa). Restoring a VM that was backed up using a backup solution which cannot directly replace VMs back to the CSV volume (this is becoming rare). Inserting a VM into a Hyper-V environment that was converted from another format, such as .VMDK. Always remember that such file copies complete the fastest when they’re done through Hyper-V’s coordinator node. What other use cases do you have?  Comment below… More tips?  More tricks?  Click over to http://www.windowsitpro.com/categories/category/Virtualization/GregShieldsonVirtualization.aspx!