Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 and HP Network Teaming testing results

This begins to look like a serial story. Hyper-V and NIC Teaming. Ever since I wrote a blog on using native VLANs with HP NIC Teaming and Hyper-V, I have been reluctant to try new versions. Now that Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 was published almost a month ago, I have attempted to evaluate the consequences for this lovely combination.

Let me begin with referring to my blogs on NIC Teaming:
http://www.hyper-v.nu/blogs/hans/?s=NIC+teaming

As from HP Network Configuration Utility (NCU) 10.10.0.x it is possible to use native VLANs in combination with Hyper-V without going through the hassle of manually adding multiple VLANs on the team and creating Hyper-V virtual networks and string those two together. By using a team setting called Promiscuous Mode we only had to make sure VLANs were known on the trunk and we were able to apply a VLAN ID to the virtual network adapter in the Hyper-V guest.

I have tested a couple of combinations:

TESTED CONFIGURATION 1

Config: Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 with NCU 10.10.0.0 and Broadcom 5.2.22.x drivers from HP PSP 8.60 but without teaming configured. VLAN configured on adapter itself.

Result: Guest can communicate with network. VLANs are passed through correctly.

Conclusion: Although you have no network redundancy in this configuration, it is easy to add a VLAN id to the vNIC in the guest. Promiscuous mode is not applicable here.

TESTED CONFIGURATION 2

Config: Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 with NCU 10.10.0.x and Broadcom 5.2.22.x drivers from HP PSP 8.60 with teaming configured.

Result: Guest can communicate with network. VLAN set on vNIC works correctly. I had to disable and enable the vNIC insight the guest to make it aware of the configuration change. I could change to any other VLAN known on the trunk without rebooting the guest.

Conclusion: In this configuration we have network redundancy for the Hyper-V guests with great flexibility and a lot easier to configure than with the classic method of adding VLANs to the NIC team.

TESTED CONFIGURATION 3

Config: Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 with drivers from HP PSP 8.60 but with updated Broadcom drivers to 6.0.60.x and NCU upgraded to 10.20.0.x with teaming configured.

Result: Guest can communicate with network. VLAN set on vNIC works correctly. I could change to any other VLAN known on the trunk without rebooting the guest.

Conclusion: In this configuration we have network redundancy for the Hyper-V guests with great flexibility and a lot easier to configure than with the classic method of adding VLANs to the NIC team. Biggest side effect is the performance gain as a result of the updated NIC Teaming software (and drivers) which I described earlier in http://www.hyper-v.nu/blogs/hans/?p=383

TESTED CONFIGURATION 4

Config: Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 with drivers from HP PSP 8.60 but with updated Broadcom drivers to 6.2.16.x and NCU remaining at 10.20.0.x with teaming configured.

Result: VLANs could be swapped easily.

Conclusion: Just updating the networking driver to the most current version left functionality unchanged

TESTED CONFIGURATION 5

Config: Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 with drivers from HP PSP 8.60 with Broadcom drivers at 6.2.16.x and NCU upgraded to 10.30.0.x with teaming configured.

Result: Guest can communicate with network. VLAN set on vNIC works correctly. I could change to any other VLAN known on the trunk without rebooting the guest.

Conclusion: Conclusively we can say that all three Broadcom driver versions and the latest three HP Network Configuration Utility versions work with Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1.

FAST STEP UPGRADES

On one of the other nodes in the cluster I upgraded the Broadcom drivers from 5.2.22.x directly to 6.2.16.x with NCU remaining on 10.10.0.x which was installed with the ProLiant Support Pack 8.60. No problems emerged.

Then I directly upgraded from NCU 10.10.0.x to NCU 10.30.0.x and again connectivity on different VLANs in the guest kept working.

Be aware that if you change a Hyper-V guest configuration in a cluster, Live Migration might fail because Failover Cluster Manager is not yet aware of the changes. Don’t forget to refresh the virtual machine configuration.

Final note

I have found no problems in HP NIC Teaming in the three latest versions of HP Network Configuration Utility and the Broadcom network drivers and should not be an impediment for upgrading to Windows Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1