Windows 2012 : Hyper-V Network design scenarios and setup – Part 1

I am starting a series of blogs to talk about Network in Windows 2012 Hyper-V

I will be covering the following scenarios, but of course there are many more possibilities :

• Scenario 1 :  4 (or more) 10GB Nic’s + 2 ISCSI/FC connectivity
• Scenario 2 : 2 (or more) 10GB Nic’s (converged network)
• Scenario 3 : 6 (or more) Nic’s 1GB Nic’s

Let’s start with scenario 1. We will create 2 teams : one for management/csv/live migration (MGMT-LM-CSV-TEAM) and other for vm external traffic (VM-TEAM).

1. First of all,  I recommend you to rename the physical nic’s. We will create the teams as per bellow:

a) 2 nic’s, teamed to be used for management + csv + live migration utilisation= MGMT-LM-CSV-TEAM

b) 2 (or more) nic’s teamed to be used for VM traffic only ( external traffic ) = VM-TEAM

c) 2 ISCSI or Fiber Channel connectivity. You will need to install the MPIO feature ( DO NOT TEAM)

As for the team VM-TEAM we can use the GUI to create the virtual switch:

• Click on Server Manager, then click on Local Server
• Click on Nic Teaming. Click on Task and then click on NEW TEAM

 

 

Select the NIC’s that will be part of the team. Make sure you select NIC’s from different Physical interfaces. Done

But for the MGMT-LM-CSV-TEAM, we need to use the Powershell as the GUI does not allow us to create multiples Virtual Switches for the same team and then we will also, configure the QoS.

Here is the PowerShell command

# Create Hyper-V Virtual Switch connected to VM-TEAM

New-VMSwitch -Name “External” -NetAdapterName “VM-TEAM” -AllowManagementOS $false

# Create Hyper-V Virtual Switch connected to MGMT-LM-CSV-TEAM

New-VMSwitch -Name “MGMT-LM-CSV-SWITCH” -NetAdapterName “MGMT-LM-CSV-TEAM” -AllowManagementOS 0 -MinimumBandwidthMode  Weight

# Set the default QoS policy; Switch is used for VMs only

Set-VMSwitch “MGMT-LM-CSV-SWITCH” -DefaultFlowMinimumBandwidthWeight 100

Add-VMNetworkAdapter -ManagementOS -Name Management –SwitchName MGMT-LM-CSV-SWITCH

Add-VMNetworkAdapter -ManagementOS -Name LM -SwitchName MGMT-LM-CSV-SWITCH

Add-VMNetworkAdapter -ManagementOS -Name CSV -SwitchName MGMT-LM-CSV-SWITCH

Set-VMNetworkAdapter -ManagementOS -Name LM -MinimumBandwidthWeight 40

Set-VMNetworkAdapter -ManagementOS -Name CSV -MinimumBandwidthWeight 5

Set-VMNetworkAdapter –ManagementOS –Name Management –MinimumBandwidthWeight 5

 

Now let’s have a look back on the GUI  (NIC Team):

And let’s have a look in the Hyper-V Manager Console, on the properties of the Virtual Switch’s:

Management, Live Migration and CSV switch: MGMT-LM-CSV-SWITCH.

Note that you won’t be able to change any setting using the GU

I as we created 3 virtual network adapters (mgmt,lm,csv).

VM external traffic switch: External

 

to be continue….