Getting Networking to Work in Hyper-V Beta

Friday, March 7, 2008

First, I thoroughly recommend reading Ben Armstrong's article, "Understanding Networking in Hyper-V," for an explanation of how networking changes on a Hyper-V enabled host. He explains that the real NIC on the host is converted to a virtual network switch and a new virtual NIC is created on the host to access the network using the virtual switch.

Sometimes networking doesn't get setup properly on the host when the Hyper-V role is installed. Here's how to fix it:


When networking is not configured properly after Hyper-V is installed, you'll see only the one physical adapter in Network Connections (assuming, of course, that you have only one network adapter).


1. Open network properties of the NIC and uncheck all the connections on the adapter (Client for Microsoft Networks, IPV4, IPV6, ...everything) and click OK. Obviously, this will disrupt network communication to and from the server, so plan this work accordingly.


2. Click Virtual Network Manager in the Hyper-V console and create a new external network bound to the real NIC. This will convert the real NIC on the host to a Microsoft Virtual Switch and create a new virtual NIC for the host to use for its network adapter (see step 4).


3. In each Hyper-V guest, select the External Virtual Network for the VM's network adapter.


4. Back on the host, you will now see two NICs in the Network Connections window. Local Area Connection (the original real NIC) is now a Microsoft Virtual Switch and is using only the Microsoft Virtual Network Switch Protocol. You will also see a new virtual NIC (usually named "Local Area Connection 3," in my testing). I've renamed it here to Virtual Local Area Connection.


5. Open the properties of the new virtual NIC and re-IP it to it's original static IP address.


6. Verify that the host has network connectivity, and then check your VM guests for connectivity.

Let me know if this helps you.

1 comment:

  1. Any suggestions what to do if blowing away all network adapters' configurations and re-creating it from scratch with reboot at each step ... two times ... does not help?
    The irony is that I have the second absolutely identical server build at the same time with the same process which has no this problem. Only difference - I made couple more 'experiments' with Hyper-V networking on this one...
    The setup I have is Intel 1000PT dual port NIC is teamed with 802.3ad (ISL) and binded to a single Hyper-V network, which in turn has VLAN ID for parent partition configured and used for the host OS.
    Just trying to avoid having 7 Ethernet cables coming to a single box ... if you count iSCSI and lights out. 5 cables look 30% brighter :)

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