Transparent Hyper-V VLANs now supported with HP NIC Teams

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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:

1. Prepare trunk/channel between Hyper-V host and core network switch(es) and add all possible VLANs
2. Create NIC Team with HP NCU
3. Create VLAN’s on the NIC Team
4. In Network Connections additional NICs are created which each represent one VLAN.
5. 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.
6. 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.

Step 4

Step 5

Step 6

Recently HP upgraded NCU to version 10.10.0.0 (9 Sep 2010). Appart 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 Promiscuousproperty 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!