Tag Archives: virtual switch

Demystifying SMB 3.x multichannel – part 6 – Hyper-V server to Hyper-V server example with Switch embedded teaming (Windows server 2016/2019 only) in VMSwitch with multiple (4) adapters on host

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Finally we are approaching the solution that is giving us great bandwidth by utilizing all four network adapters – we are still using Switch embedded teaming solution to team physical interfaces directly when creating Hyper-V Virtual Switch but this time with a slightly different command in Powershell.

New-VMSwitch -Name Team01 -EnableEmbeddedTeaming $true -AllowManagementOS $false -NetAdapterName NIC1,NIC2,NIC3,NIC4

!Warning! When you execute this command you will remain without connectivity, so I suggest to continue with following commands and to execute them consequently. So after creating a Virtual Switch consisting of our four physical NICs and combined with embedded teaming feature we are ready to give our Hyper-V host management network cards.

Add-VMNetworkAdapter -ManagementOS -SwitchName Team01 -Name MGMT01
Add-VMNetworkAdapter -ManagementOS -SwitchName Team01 -Name MGMT02
Add-VMNetworkAdapter -ManagementOS -SwitchName Team01 -Name MGMT03
Add-VMNetworkAdapter -ManagementOS -SwitchName Team01 -Name MGMT04

Finally we are ready to test copying of files between our two Hyper-V hosts.

As you can see with teaming that is configured by using new Switch embedded teaming functionality in Hyper-V Virtual Switch and by creating four adapters for management OS (host) we are getting the same results as we did in part 1 of this series – when we were using just our 4 physical NICs without any additional configuration.

Demystifying SMB 3.x multichannel – part 4 – Hyper-V server to Hyper-V server example with windows teaming tool (server manager / powershell) and VMSwitch with multiple virtual network cards

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We are pushing it forward – in previous example (part 3) we made virtual switch just by simply using Hyper-V Manager (or Powershell) but with no extra configuration – the result was that when copying from server to server we got only 1 gigabit throughput.

Now, we are trying to upgrade the scenario by using Powershell (you can only do this by using Powershell or by using System Center Virtual Machine Manager (that below also uses Powershell :)) – we are going to create Virtual Switch but then we are going to assign more than just one virtual network card to host operating system (our Hyper-V host):

So by doing:

New-VMSwitch -Name Team01 -AllowManagementOS $false -NetAdapterName Team01

We simply create a virtual switch, that does not have in previous part mentioned checkbox  “Allow management operating system to share this network adapter” checked so, no Virtual Network card is created – !Warning! If you run only this cmdlet you will cut yourself out of your Hyper-V host – so it is better to prepare also the second part and run it all together so we will continue by using cmdlet Add-VMNetworkAdapter:

Add-VMNetworkAdapter -ManagementOS -SwitchName Team01 -Name MGMT01
Add-VMNetworkAdapter -ManagementOS -SwitchName Team01 -Name MGMT02
Add-VMNetworkAdapter -ManagementOS -SwitchName Team01 -Name MGMT03
Add-VMNetworkAdapter -ManagementOS -SwitchName Team01 -Name MGMT04

This cmdlets will create 4 virtual adapters for your Hyper-V Host to use (yes, you can also use VLANS with this network adapters).

As can be seen in the video we are getting better results than with a single virtual network adapter but still we are getting not more than 2 gigabit of bandwidth – and it is not stable.

Demystifying SMB 3.x multichannel – part 3 – Hyper-V server to Hyper-V server example with windows teaming tool (server manager / powershell) and VMSwitch on top

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As I told you at the beginning of this series I am a big fan of Hyper-V – I have been implementing it since 2008 (when nobody believed this would ever become a serious virtualization platform :)). So in Windows server 2012 / 2012 R2 the most common way of setting up your Hyper-V networking was to just team your NICs by using Windows provided tool and then just to create a VMSwitch on top of it – by using Hyper-V manager or Powershell and by using the checkbox Allow management operating system to share this network adapter. After this process you ended up with a new virtual NIC called for example vEthernet (Team01).

Like in previous scenario (part 2) we have 1 gigabit speed when copying files from server to server. And yes, if there was a third server we would probably start using next NIC so we would have 2 gigabit traffic from server 1 – 1 gigabit to server 2 and 1 gigabit to server 2 – but still just a gigabit to each of them.

In this video you can see that we are upgrading previous scenario (teamed NICs) by enabling Hyper-V Virtual Switch (External type) using Hyper-V Manager – you could also do that by using Powershell following the documentation.