Blog by PQR

In the “Configuration Challenge Xenserver, vSphere 4 and Hyper-V 2008 R2” I’ve done some research on the possibilities of network redundancy within Hyper-V. A lot of people wonder if there is a way to achieve network redundancy within Hyper-V… Of course there is a way to achieve this! In the next sections I’ll describe the way how you can achieve network redundancy within Hyper-V on HP hardware.

 

Redundancy with a NIC team

There is a piece of software called: HP Proliant Network Teaming Software. With this software it is possible to group several physical network controllers into a single logical network interface controller. NIC teaming enhances fault tolerance by increasing the availability of a server’s network connection. Multiple network paths also allow balancing network traffic for better performance. The HP Proliant Network Teaming Software and Microsoft Hyper-V technology can work together.

There are some requirements which you need to take into account:

- Verify HP Proliant server support (http://tinyurl.com/b9rks5);

- Use HP Proliant Network Teaming Software (HP Network Configuration Utility (NCU) version 9.35 or greater);

- Install the Hyper-V role first and then you can enable the HP Proliant Network Teaming Software (If the teaming software is installed first, the network adapter may cease passing traffic).

To create a team you need to use 2 NIC’s at minimum and 8 at maximum. You can use the NCU to create a team:

 

 

On the properties of the team (vSwitch) you can configure the team settings. For detailed information regarding this settings you can take a look at: http://tinyurl.com/5wq2at.

 

Creating the vSwitch in Hyper-V

So when we’ve created the NIC team we can create the vSwitch in Hyper-V. To be clear this vSwitch will consists out of the logical created NIC, and this logical NIC consists out of the two physical NICS.

To create this vSwitch we start the Hyper-V manager, select a host and navigate to Virtual Network Manager. We choose for an external switch type and we select the adapter called vSwitch (this is the logical created NIC):

 

 

The name of the vSwitch will be vSwitch01.

When you create the vSwitch several things occur. Of course the vSwitch will be created, a virtual NIC will be created and protocol bindings on the Logical NIC changes. This all looks like this:

 

 

VLAN tagging in Hyper-V

When you would like to secure and divide traffic you can use VLAN technologies to achieve this. You can isolate traffic from the parent OS or other VM’s sharing the same virtual switch. The physical adapter must support VLAN configuration but no configuration on the physical adapter is required.

A VLAN is identified by a VLAN ID. The VLAN ID must be unique and it represent a virtually segmented network. The VLAN ID is encapsulated within the Ethernet frame, which is how multiple VM’s using the same physical NIC can communicate simultaneously on different VLANs.

In Hyper-V you can set VLAN ID’s on different places. In the previous section I explained how the Virtual NIC is created in the parent OS. When you would like set a VLAN ID on this Virtual NIC you can do this on the properties of the related vSwitch:

 

 

When you would like to separate Management traffic from VM traffic than you have the option to use a dedicated NIC or set a VLAN ID like I just did.

I’ve edited this setting through SCVMM but it is also possible to do this in the Hyper-V manager. When a particular VM needs access to an certain VLAN you need to configure this on the VM properties. You can enter these setting to right click your VM, go to the properties of the VM and then select ‘Hardware Configuration’ (applies to SCVMM but also possible in the Hyper-V manager). When you select the ‘Network Adapter’ you can configure a VLAN ID:

 

 

When you’ve multiple VLANs and you would extend these to the Virtual Switch in Hyper-V than you need to configure an 802.1q trunk on the physical switch ports to which the physical NICS are connected. On the properties of the VM you can configure to which VLAN the VM belongs. The VLAN tags are stripped on the Virtual Switch.

 

iSCSI and Hyper-V

When you choose for an iSCSI storage solution then the configuration is just like an iSCSI configuration on a non Hyper-V server. The only thing is that you not must select this card as a Virtual Network during the Hyper-V role setup. It’s a best practice to separate iSCSI traffic from the other traffic. You can arrange this to configure another network or subnet for the iSCSI NICS. The image below illustrates this architecture:

 

 

Cheers, Peter Noorderijk