Hyper-V Networking (Part 1)

If you are running Hyper-V, one of the most important considerations is networking. Making the wrong design choices when configuring networking can cost you dearly down the track, so here are some guidelines for networking Hyper-V.

Standalone Hyper-V

If you are using Hyper-V in a standalone deployment (i.e. No clustering), you should have two network cards per host:

  • 1 network card for Hyper-V Host Management
  • 1 network card for Hyper-V Virtual Machine traffic. You may also consider teaming for this NIC to increase throughput if you have network intensive workloads
  • You may require an additional 2 network cards for iSCSI if you are not using DAS. If you are using iSCSI on your Hyper-V hosts and you are not using failover clustering you should definitely consider implementing clustering

Clustered Hyper-V

If you are running Hyper-V in a clustered HA environment, you will require additional network cards. You can run a cluster with a minimum of two networks (1 Internal and 1 Public), but it is recommended to have more:

  • 1 Network for Host Management – Configure a default gateway on this NIC, and use either static IPv4 or static IPv6.
  • 1 Network for Virtual Machine Traffic – Select to dedicate this network for Virtual Machine traffic and Hyper-V will automatically unbind all other services from the NIC, leaving only the Virtual Switch. You may also consider teaming for this NIC to increase throughput if you have network intensive workloads running on your Virtual Machines
  • 2 Network cards for iSCSI using MPIO. Connect each NIC to a different switch and a different subnet if possible. Use 10GbE NICs if possible. Do not configure a default gateway on this NIC if it’s not needed. Unbind unnecessary services from the adapter
  • 1 Network for Hyper-V Live Migration. Do not configure a default gateway. Use either static IPv4 or static IPv6, but IPv6 is ideal here because there are no client considerations. You may also consider teaming for this NIC to decrease the time it takes to Live Migrate a virtual machine. You may consider combining this with the CSV network as you will not frequently have heavy CSV traffic WITH heavy Live Migration Traffic
  • 1 Cluster Shared Volume Network. Do not configure a default gateway. Use either static IPv4 or static IPv6
  • 1 Internal Cluster Network. Do not configure a default gateway. Use either static IPv4 or static IPv6

More details on how to configure Hyper-V networking in part two of this series.

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