Virtual Connect + HyperV

[Kimono]

Hi,

Does anybody know if it's possible with HyperV to run all of the Live Migration, CSV, and Management traffic down a pair of trunked links?

I'd like to, using Virtual Connect, carve up something like this:

2x FlexNICS - Live Migration, CSV, Parent host - so 3 different VLANs trunked here - just not sure if HyperV allows this like VMware does
2x FlexNICS - Virtual Machine production VLANS using the VLAN Promiscuous features in NCU 10.10 ... upto 10 VLANs trunked
2x FlexNICS - Production DMZ VLANs ... 4 VLANs trunked using VLAN Promiscuous again

new to Virtual Connect & HyperV but could do this with VMware in a cinch.

[Antonio Milanese · Accepted solution]

Hi,

yes the secret sauce is vlan transparent
(promiscuous) mode support in NIC drivers and NCU (PSP 8.60 or above).

As usual (yes I hate you broadcom =) I would advise you to update to latest firmwares broadcom NICs and disable system wide TOE engines on the parent partitions.

Anyway there are plenty of WP and reference designs that use this vc-flex partioning so just check HP site:

http://h18004.www1.hp.com/products/servers/software/microsoft/virtualization/

and here a simple reference:

http://www.sysengteam.com/index.php/2010/04/virtualization/hyper-v-r2-network-configuration-using-hp-virtual-connect-flex-10/

Regards,
Antonio

[Kimono]

Thanks Antonio,

those articles were great. Here's another one I ended up finding with some of the promiscuous stuff also mentioned
http://www.hyper-v.nu/blogs/hans/?p=543

It seems the Hyper-V networking stack is a bit clunkier than VMware. It's workable, but give me vSphere any day!

[Antonio Milanese]

Hi,

Yes Hyper-V networking behaves somewhat fickle sometimes =)

nevertheless just to add some good reading to the above ones:

MS hyper-v networking deepdive..not updated to latest features like VMQ or VM-Chimney but enlightening

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=3fac6d40-d6b5-4658-bc54-62b925ed7eea

http://www.virtualizationadmin.com/articles-tutorials/microsoft-hyper-v-articles/networking/virtual-networking-hyper-v-part1.html

this a must read (and not only fore hyper-v) since, you know, TOE is your enemy number one!

http://blogs.technet.com/b/cedward/archive/2011/04/08/hyper-v-networking-optimizations-part-1-of-6-tcp-chimney-offload.aspx

Regards,
Antonio