As more and more people start deploying Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V, the most common question will be: \u201chow many NIC\u2019s or network cards do I need to implement Live Migration?\u201d. Here\u2019s the answer for you.<\/p>\n
Your minimum optimal configuration is:<\/p>\n
You\u2019ll need to add more NIC\u2019s if you want NIC teaming or need to dedicate NIC\u2019s to virtual switches or VM\u2019s. This does not account for iSCSI NIC\u2019s which should obviously be dedicated to their role.<\/p>\n
How does Windows know which NIC to use for Live Migration? Failover Clustering picks a private network for the job. You can see the results by launching the Failover Clustering MMC, opening up the properties of a VM, and going to the last tab. Here you\u2019ll see which network was chosen. You can specify an alternative if you wish.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve gone with a different layout. We\u2019re using HP Blade servers with virtual connects. Adding NIC\u2019s is a pricey operation because it means buying more pricey virtual connects. I also need fault tolerance for the virtual machines so a balance had to be found. Here\u2019s the layout we have:<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve tested this quite a bit and pairing live migration with the cluster heartbeat has had no ill effects. But what happens if I need to live migrate all the VM\u2019s on a host? Won\u2019t that flood the heartbeat network and cause failovers all over the place?<\/p>\n
No. Live Migration is serial. That means only one VM is transferred at once. It\u2019s designed not to flood a network. Say you initiate maintenance mode in VMM on a cluster node. Each VM is moved one at a time across the Live Migration network.<\/p>\n
You can also see I\u2019ve trunked the virtual switch NIC\u2019s. That allows us to place VM\u2019s onto different VLAN\u2019s or subnets, each being firewalled from each other. This barrier is controlled entirely by the firewalls. I\u2019ll blog about this later because it\u2019s one that deserves some time and concentration. It has totally wrecked the minds of very senior Cisco admins I\u2019ve worked with in the past when doing Hyper-V and VMware deployments \u2013 eventually I just told them to treat virtualisation as a black box and to trust me \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n
I just thought of another question. \u201cWhat if I had a configuration that was OK for Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V Quick Migration?\u201d. That\u2019s exactly what I had and why I chose the last configuration. Really, you could do that with 3 NIC\u2019s instead of 4 (drop the last one for no virtual switch fault tolerance).<\/p>\n
Recommended Reading:<\/p>\n
As more and more people start deploying Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V, the most common question will be: \u201chow many NIC\u2019s or network cards do I need to implement Live Migration?\u201d. Here\u2019s the answer for you. Your minimum optimal configuration is: NIC #1: Parent partition (normal network) NIC #2: Cluster heartbeat (private network) NIC #3: … Continue reading “Network Requirements for Live Migration”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[181,117],"class_list":["post-10088","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hyper-v","tag-hyper-v","tag-windows-server-2008-r2"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10088","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10088"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10088\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10088"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10088"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10088"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}