NIC teaming for Hyper-V
We get a lot of questions about NIC teaming support in Windows Server 2008 so that this can be used to create fault tolerant virtual switches within Hyper-V.
It is absolutely possible to use NIC teaming with Hyper-V, however this support must be provided by the hardware vendors.
Now, HP finally released a whitepaper that explains which configurations of NIC teaming are supported for Windows Server 2008 and Hyper-V.
See the Windows Virtualization Team Blog article for more information:
http://blogs.technet.com/virtualization/archive/2009/03/02/hp-whitepapers-on-nic-teaming-for-hyper-v.aspx
I did a quick query on network teaming in combination with Hyper-V and there’s still not a lot of documentation that describes how to get this working.
I did find one from the UK Microsoft Virtualization User Group blog that specifically describes the Broadcom solution:
http://www.mvug.co.uk/blogs/mvugblog/archive/2009/01/25/broadcom-nic-teaming-and-hyper-v.aspx
When you start testing their NIC teaming solution, make sure that you:
- Use the latest and greatest drivers and teaming software
- Install the Hyper-V role first
- Install the NIC teaming software
- Configure the network team
- Configure networking from Hyper-V for the network team
The above is the way to get it working for every teaming solution that has been tested and works with Hyper-V.
Edie
