I have blogged about my HyperV DevRig​ before, but want to look at making some annual modifications.

I might add some more capacity to it, but to be honest, it isn't overly stretched, so I want to ensure I have everything configured correctly, so any hardware / HyperV buffs, I am looking to you for advice.  Please comment on this blog post, or email me directly: mark dot stokes at sharepointstudio dot com

Current Hardware Setup

Motherboard: Supermicro. Will take Dual Xeon processors
CPU: 1x Intel Xeon (i7 based one) (will take max 2)
Memory: 24Gig (6x4GB) Hynix Server Memory (will take max 96GB)
RAID Controller: HighPoint 2230
Disks: 4x Seagate ST31000524AS 3.5 inch Barracuda 1TB GB 7200rpm SATA
RAID Configuration: RAID 10 comprising 2xRAID1 members with 2 disks each. No Spare disks. 1 large volume split into 2 partitions: C: (60GB)  and D:(1.75TB)
Network Connectivity: 2x Gigabit LAN controllers

Current Software Setup

Windows Server 2008 R2: Installed on C:\ drive
Domain: Not connected to my domain (as my DC is a VM on the server I couldn't add it initially, I probably could now)
HyperV data files: All stored on the D: partition
Roles: Fileservices & HyperV

Virtual Machines in HyperV

Domain Controller
SQLx64
SharePoint 2007
SharePoint 2010 - Collab Farm
SharePoint 2010 - Shared Services Farm
SharePoint 2010 - Client PoC Farm
Network Services - TFTP, TFS, etc

Future State

So, this setup has worked pretty well for me over the last year to 18 months that the server has been running... pretty much faultlessly.  Only today has the RAID controller decided to rebuild the array (which looks like it is going to take DAYS!)

What I want to know, is if I put the effort in, can I drastically improve the stability / performance / expandability of my DevRig.

What would you suggest to change? Some questions I have are:

  1. Would installing a single / RAIDED SSD on a different controller for the Host OS (server 2008 R2 with HyperV) give me any performance / power consumption / stability improvements?
  2. Is the RAID controller ay good? Initially I wanted to run ESXi as the host, but my RAID controller wasn't supported
  3. Should I put my HyperV server on the domain?
  4. Should I move the Domain Controller off the HyperV server onto it's own HP Microserver?

Any other thoughts / Ideas?