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Transparent Hyper-V VLANs now supported with HP NIC Teams
Using VLANs in Hyper-V virtual machines has always been a bit messy with HP’s teaming sofware, aka HP Network Configuration Utility for Windows Server 2008 R2. Until now a lot of steps had to be taken:
- Prepare trunk/channel between Hyper-V host and core network switch(es) and add all possible VLANs
- Create NIC Team with HP NCU
- Create VLAN’s on the NIC Team
- In Network Connections additional NICs are created which each represent one VLAN.
- Create a Hyper-V Virtual Network connected to an external network adapter representing a specific VLAN and remove tick in front of Allow management operating system to share this network adapter because we don’t want to see even more NIC’s under Network Connections.
- Add VLAN id to virtual network adapter in Virtual Machine, start the machine and add an IP address to the virtual network adapter that belongs to that VLAN.
Step 2
Step 3
A NIC Team with VLANs is recognized by a V in front of the team name.
![image[23]](http://hyper-v.nu/blogs/hans/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/image23.png "image[23]")
Step 4
Step 5
Step 6
Recently HP upgraded NCU to version 10.10.0.0 (9 Sep 2010). Apart from additional support for a new Converged Network Adapter (CNA), one of the notable improvements is that it now formally supports VLANs created in Hyper-V Virtual Machines.
The help file that goes with the new NCU version states that a new VLAN Promiscuous property allows a team to pass VLAN tagged packets between virtual machine and external networks only when there is no VLAN created on that team in the Host operating system. If a team is assigned to a virtual machine, the NCU disables the VLAN button to prevent VLANs from being created on the team in the host operating system. This property is available only on Windows 2008 x64/R2 and only when the Hyper-V role is installed.
VLAN Promiscuous is disabled by default.
If the VLAN Promiscuous property and the VLAN button on the NCU GUI are mutually exclusive. If one is selected or configured, the other is hidden or disabled.
If Hyper-V is installed and VLANs are created on the team in the host operating system, the NCU either hides the VLAN Promiscuous property or disables it.
If we interpret correctly a NIC Team is now transparent for VLAN tags. It now allows us to use more than 64 VLANs when the Virtual Connect is switched into tunneling mode. The only thing to do is create a team from multiple network ports in a ProLiant server, use the teamed NIC as an external adapter for a Hyper-V virtual network and add a VLAN tag to the virtual network adapter in a virtual machine.
As soon as I have been able to test this setup, I will write an extra piece to this blog. After all, the proof is in the pudding!
| Print article | This entry was posted by Hans Vredevoort on September 28, 2010 at 19:05, and is filed under Hans Vredevoort, Hyper-v. Follow any responses to this post through RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site. |
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about 2 years ago
I have a 3 node cluster running Hyper-V on HP370s. I installed NCU 10.10 on one node yesterday, the second today, and will finish tomorrow. So far it has been a headache.
Make sure you update your NIC drivers first! I was going from NCU 10.0 to 10.10 and my NIC drivers were 1 rev behind but still incompatible with the new NCU.
Also, if I installed NCU 10.10 over top of 10.0 it appeared to be successful, but would quit unexpectedly when trying to access the configruation of a team.
The only successful path that I have found is to uninstall NCU 10.0, update the NIC drivers, and then install NCU 10.10 and recreate my teams. A real pain.
One other thing, there will be a warning at startup because it appears that HP forgot to digitally sign the exe.
The VLAN tab is definitely gone though so I’m interested to see how this all works. Let me know if you get yours set up.
about 2 years ago
Dear Hans
I have two clustered nodes, i am using Hyper-V windows 2008 r2 but i am using NCU version 9.90.0.17 is there any chance to upgrade to NCU 10.
Is that will be supported, my host machine has two network card NC373i multifunction Gigabit server adapter,
Thank you for your knowledge
about 2 years ago
@Nasheet
Your configuration is supported, but please check Kevin’s comment. I will shortly publish the results of my configuration.
about 2 years ago
@Kevin
Thanks for adding the requirement for updating the drivers first. I had the luxury to test in a research environment first. Because I updated the drivers before installing the new teaming software, I saw no direct problems. Did you enable VLAN Promiscuous on the HP Network Adapter Team. In my next blog I will explain how this all works. In my configuration I will use HP BladeSystem with HP Virtual Connect Flex-10 and Hyper-V R2.
about 2 years ago
Is there a way to do this with the Broadcom teaming software with Dell servers that is supported on Hyper-V?
about 2 years ago
@Mark I have not used that combination but according to this post http://www.delltechcenter.com/search/everything/Vlan%20hyper-v?contains=Vlan%20hyper-v VLANs with Broadcom teams appear to have the same limitations that HP recently solved as per my blog. Anyone else who can help Mark out?
about 2 years ago
I’d appreciate any help. We use Dells so we are restricted to the integrated Broadcoms or an add-in NIC card. I tested this capability with Intel a while back and it “epic failed”. I’d love to use teamed GB NICs or even 10GB if available.
about 2 years ago
@Mark That’s odd. I understood the Intel NICs were the only ones that supported native Hyper-V VLANs really well. Please post your documented question on the Hyper-V forums where many of my colleague MVP’s answer many questions: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en/winserverhyperv/threads/
about 2 years ago
Has anyone gotten the VLAN promiscuous setting to work?
It did not work when I tried it on our HPNC532i Flex-10 NICs, and I had to revert to adding seperate virtual NIC’s for each VLAN. This really kind of sucks, because once you create a virtual network in Hyper-V using these NIC’s the VLAN button/VLAN tab in the NCU is no longer available. If you want to add a VLAN, you have to first remove all your networks in Hyper-V.
Also, at least in my case the VLAN’s on the guest machines would not work until I ticked the box to allow the management os to share the adapter. I could then untick it, and it would still work though.
about 2 years ago
@Todd Please check the next blog in which I document the configuration of transparent Hyper-V VLANs. The good thing about this configuration is that you only have to set this up once and then just change the VLAN ID on the virtual network adapter. Good luck with your config.
about 2 years ago
I followed your document with the Flex10 configuration and enabled Promiscuous in the NCU settings, and created a virtual machine with a VLAN tag configured but I don’t understand how the Tunnel network is supposed to show up under Ethernet Networks in the Virtual Connect Manager. Is it supposed to just show up or does this have to be manually created? If it has to be created how is that done?
Thank Youi
about 2 years ago
@Kevin
As posted on the follow-up article, I found the solution (workaround) for the crashing:
Simply navigate to…
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEMControlSet001ControlClass{4D36E972-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}
Find the key (folder) that represents your NIC Team (for example 0012), which you can find by looking for the “TeamName” value under each key until you find your team.
Create a new String value (REG_SZ) called:
VLANPromiscuous
Set it to 0 (disabled/default) or 1 (enabled).
It looks like HP forgot to add the key on upgrades.
– rp
about 2 years ago
We ran into similar issues like Todd did, that when you create vlans on the Nic team, the abillity to manage them after presenting them to Hyper-V is gone.
We found that this is only true when you connect the vlan that is set as the Default/Native VLAN id. We used a “bogus” VLAN and set that as the Default/Native VLAN in NCU and don’t use that in Hyper-V.
We’re now able to continue to manage VLANS through the NCU and don’t have to break the Hyper-V configuration in order to change the VLAN configuration on the physical nics.
about 2 years ago
Hi Eric,
That’s a very nice discovery! Since NCU 10.20 we did have to remove the Hyper-V connection if we wanted to switch off/on promiscuous mode or Add/Remove VLANs without promiscuous mode. Currently we prefer to use the VLAN setting on the virtual NIC in the guest to use different VLANs in different VMs.
Thansk for your contributions,
Hans