Hyper-V

Currently, I am heavily involved in a project to deploy a new infrastructure project for a new branch office. In this office we are deploying a network in a box (pod) style configuration consisting of networking, storage array, fibre channel switching and last but not least, a pair of servers to operate a Hyper-V Cluster running on Windows Server 2008 R2 Server Core.

In this series of posts, I will share some of the things I have found, learnt and discovered on my journey to deploying the Server Core Hyper-V Cluster. This first post focuses on networking as this is the first thing that needs to be configured on the hosts before you can progress into anything else, and also is the most fundamental operational component of the Hyper-V role.

Luckily for us, Server Core still has Notepad which makes working with some of these commands much easier.

For things, first, run ipconfig /All > C:Adapters.txt to pipe a list of all of the adapters Windows can see to a text file along with their current configuration. The most important element here are the names. By default, all of the adapters are named Local Area Connection with a trailing number. For identification purposes, I wanted a naming convention for them all so in the event of a cable or port failure we could easily identify which port was at fault.This will also make identifying the adapters for the purpose of setting up the teams easier.

Open the text file with the command Notepad.exe C:Adapters.txt and identify which adapters in the text file map to the physical adapters on your server. The easiest way to connect all of the adapters to a physical network and then one by one, disconnect an adapter, re-run the piped ipconfig command and see which adapter has changed its link state.

Once you have identified an adapter, use the following command to name it:

netsh interface set interface name=”Local Area Connection” newname=”SL1-P1-MAN1”

My naming convention consists of SL1, which identifies which PCI slot the port is based on, P1 which identifies the port within that slot and finally MAN1 which tells me that it will be the first port in the Management team once configured.

Repeat these steps until all of your networks are named then sit back and be safe in the knowledge that if a problem occurs with one of your ports once your server is in the wild, you will be able to easily guide your on-site technician to the correct port.