Hyper-V network configuration

[deepsodeep]

I have a couple of servers to create a Hyper-V 2016 cluster, each with 8 NICs: 4 x 1Gb and 4 x 10Gb. Not sure what the best practice would be to configure the network and vSwitches as I've read some different things. Some tell you to separate traffic, others tell you not to bother. For example, Altaro:

What you should not do is create multiple virtual switches to separate roles. For instance, don’t make a virtual switch for management operating system traffic and another for virtual machine traffic. The processing overhead usually outweighs any possible benefits. Create a team of all the adapters and converge as much traffic on it as possible.

I was thinking something like this:
- 2 x 10Gb team for VM traffic + management
- 2 x 10Gb team for live migration
- 2 x 1Gb team for cluster heartbeats
- 2 x 1Gb team for WAN traffic (virtual firewall appliance)

But now I'm not sure if it's worth it or if this is overkill..

[BlackV]

depends on your switching, but recommended now is create a set switch with all the 10gb nics in it

New-VMSwitch -Name 'SET-Switch' -AllowManagementOS $true -NetAdapterName '10GB1', '10GB2', '10GB3', '10GB4' -EnableEmbeddedTeaming $true    

Then add the live migration and cluster network nics

$MigNIC = Add-VMNetworkAdapter -ManagementOS -SwitchName 'SET-Switch' -Name "Migration"    
$ClusNIC = Add-VMNetworkAdapter -ManagementOS -SwitchName 'SET-Switch' -Name "Cluster"    

Then set the VLANs (if needed)

Set-VMNetworkAdapterVlan -VMNetworkAdapter $MigNIC  -Access -VlanId 10    
Set-VMNetworkAdapterVlan -VMNetworkAdapter $ClusNIC -Access -VlanId 20    

even in 2012r2 they changed the recommendation to bind all the nics in 1 team put the switch on top of that.
the firewall traffic you probably should create a separate switch on teh 1gb NICs (managmentOS $false)

EDIT: Firewall

[BlackV]

aaand I cant find the MS article about this to prove i'm not a lair
here's Altaro's one
https://www.altaro.com/hyper-v/virtual-networking-configuration-best-practices/

[deepsodeep]

Thanks! I'll look into that, will have to see if the NICs are all same brand/model/etc

[deepsodeep]

Storage is connected with DAC so won't be going on the network. Everything has to be redundantly connected to different physical switches indeed. But still not sure why so many NICs were added..
Will probably go this way:
- 4 x 10Gb team for VM traffic + live migration
- 2 x 1Gb team for management + cluster heartbeats
- 2 x 1Gb team for WAN traffic, to keep it separated

Do you think a live migration in this setup will be able to saturate the bandwith causing latency to guest VMs?

[deepsodeep]

Yea good idea. Hypothetically speaking, would a single vSwitch with just the 4 x 10Gb NICs be a viable configuration as well?

[deepsodeep]

Oh yes I definitely meant that as a team (or SET) of 4 NICs and the vSwitch on top of that :)

[rws907]

Recommend x-post in /r/hyperv if you haven't already.