Have you ever built a Hyper-V virtual machine with 2 or more NICs, each on different networks, and struggled with assigning IP stacks in the guest OS? I sure have. When I was writing materials with virtual SOFS clusters, I often had 3-6 NICs per VM, each requiring an IPv4 stack for a different network. I needed to ensure that VMs were aligned and able to talk on those networks.
With modern physical hardware, we get a feature called Consistent Device Naming (CDN). This allows the BIOS to name the NIC and that’s how the NIC appears in the physical WS2012 (or later) install. Instead of the random “Local Area Connection” or “Ethernet” name, you get a predictable “Slot 1 1” or similar, based on the physical build of the server.
With Windows Server vNext, we are getting something similar, but not identical. This is not vCDN as some commentators have called it because it does require some work in the guest OS to enable the feature. Here’s how it works (all via PowerShell):
- You create a vNIC for a VM, and label that vNIC in the VM settings (you can actually do that now on WS2012 or later, as readers of WS2012 Hyper-V Installation and Configuration Guide might know!).
- Run a single cmdlet in the guest OS to instruct Windows Server vNext to name the connection after the adapter.
Armed with this feature, the days of disconnecting virtual NICs in Hyper-V Manager to rename them in the guest OS are numbered. Thankfully!
“Run a single cmdlet”
What cmdlet?
I’m not doing “how to” or deep posts until we get much closer to release. It’s way too soon to be posting that stuff because it would probably change.