Chris Henley is a fun and energetic representative of Microsoft. He works on the Developer Platform Evangelist team at Microsoft as an IT Professional Evangelist in the western region and is the co-author of Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 Administration Instant Reference from Sybex press. Chris is a regular speaker and presenter at user groups, Technet events, and major conferences around the US.
He has extensive experience in the world of computer networks. He is passionate about the way that technology helps people. He has an entertaining and insightful style of communicating technical information and of making difficult concepts easy to understand. He is an expert in server architecture and network design. He loves to push the envelope of what we think about computers, and what software can do. Chris spends his spare time playing XBOX360 with his wife and kids, fly fishing, camping, hiking, and searching for the best chocolate cake on planet earth.
I spent a few hours this week at the New Horizons Computer Learning Center in Salt Lake City. They had asked if I would come and spend some time talking to some of their local techies about virtualization, and specifically about Hyper-V. We talked for more than 2 hours, and the discussion was excellent. One of the students asked a question for which I did not know the answer. So I told him I would find the answer and post it here.
Question: When using the legacy network adapter in Hyper-v what hardware is actually being emulated? And what are its capabilities and limitations?
I had to search TechNet for a few minutes before I found the answer. It is actually contain in the additional comments section of the Step by Step Guide to getting started with Hyper-V The guide is worth reading as it has some really good info about setting up Hyper-V.
"A legacy network adapter works without installing a virtual machine driver because the driver is already available on most operating systems. The legacy network adapter emulates a physical network adapter, multiport DEC 21140 10/100TX 100 MB. A legacy network adapter also supports network-based installations because it includes the ability to boot to the Pre-Boot Execution Environment (PXE). The legacy network adapter is not supported in the 64-bit edition of Windows Server 2003 or the Windows XP Professional x64 Edition."
So there you have it. The nitty-gritty on Legacy Network Card in Hyper-V.
For more information on Hyper-V please visit
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008/en/us/virtualization-consolidation.aspx