Azure Stack HCI 20H2 using Nested Virtualization

Question

Hello, We are trying to implement HCI on nested virtualization setup.

We are following https://github.com/Azure/AzureStackHCI-EvalGuide/tree/main/nested document, which talks about the setup. We could able to setup till the management cluster. However, when we try to setup the HCI nodes(https://github.com/Azure/AzureStackHCI-EvalGuide/blob/main/nested/steps/3b_AzSHCINodesPS.md), we are facing the error. Looks like the VM running on the Hyper-V does not have enough vCPU (16 vCPU * 2 node), where as the host VM has only 16vCPU as we have choosen Standard_E16s_v4 hardward size.

Can some one did the nested virtualization? What is the configuration we need to have on host VM, where Hyper-V is running?

Answer 1

It's my understanding that a single VM cannot have more vCPUs than the # of logical processors on the host. It doesn't matter if the total # of vCPUs across your VMs adds up to more than the # of logical processors in the host - that's fine.

Can you run this from PowerShell?

(Get-CimInstance -ClassName Win32_Processor).NumberOfLogicalProcessors

When i wrote the guide, in this step: https://github.com/Azure/AzureStackHCI-EvalGuide/blob/main/nested/steps/3b_AzSHCINodesPS.md#create-the-azshcinode01-vm-using-powershell, i used 16 vCPUs for my nested AzSHCI nodes, and I never use a larger Azure VM than an E16.

Thanks,
Matt

Answer 2

Did you resize your C:\ inside the VM once you'd made the change to the Azure VM configuration?

$size = (Get-PartitionSupportedSize -DriveLetter "C")
Resize-Partition -DriveLetter "C" -Size $size.SizeMax

Thanks,
Matt

Answer 3

Hi - if you have an E16 VM (16 vCPUs), you should be able to create a nested VM with up to (and including) 16 vCPUs. You can create more than one of these VMs too - what is blocked would be creating a nested AzSHCI node VM with more than 16 vCPUs. You cannot create a VM with more vCPUs than the "host" has logical processors.

What is the exact error message you're getting?

Thanks!

Answer 4

Hello Matt,

Now with Standard E16ds_v4 (16 vcpus, 128 GiB memory) size, I'm able to create a sing HCI node. The HDD size was 256 GB then when I created the 2nd HCI node getting the error. Then I increaded the HDD size to 1TB then start all the management nodes and tried again. still getting this error. Can you help me?

Answer 5

Super, it worked. thanks a lot, Matt.