Hyper-V External Switches | Broadcom NetXtreme Ports

[dojit]

Hi All,

I refer to the VEEAM Technical how-to blog articles:
https://www.veeam.com/blog/how-to-confi ... witch.html
https://www.veeam.com/blog/hyperv-set-m ... shell.html

I am preparing my Agencies Hyper-V On-Premise infrastructure for VBR 12.2, I need to ensure my Hyper-V Virtual Switch Management is correctly configured from a host/VM perspective.

Can I request guidance / best practice / the correct way to configure Hyper-V External VMSwitches for HPE Proliant DL 380 GEN11 with an onboard PCIe HPE Ethernet 1Gb 4-port 331T Adapter?

Example:

HPE Proliant DL380 Gen11
OS: Windows Server 2022
1 x VM for File/Print
1 x VM for ADDS/DNS/DHCP/DFS etc

Get-NetAdapter
Name InterfaceDescription ifIndex Status
---- -------------------- ------- ------
PCIe Slot 15 Port 1 Broadcom NetXtreme Gigabit Ethernet 11 Up
PCIe Slot 15 Port 2 Broadcom NetXtreme Gigabit Ethernet #2 8 Up
PCIe Slot 15 Port 3 Broadcom NetXtreme Gigabit Ethernet #3 9 Up
PCIe Slot 15 Port 4 Broadcom NetXtreme Gigabit Ethernet #4 6 Up

Configure the PCIe Slot 15 Port 1 Broadcom NetXtreme Gigabit Ethernet as a normal physical NIC
Assign TCP/IP configuration as normal
No need to create a Hyper-V "Management" External VMSwitch and "Allow management operating system to share this network adapter"

Or should this be:

Create New VMSwitch for the Hyper-V Host Management
New-VMSwitch -Name "Management" -NetAdapterName "PCIe Slot 15 Port 1" -AllowManagementOS $true
Set "Allow management operating system to share this network adapter" as this virtual switch is dedicated to management traffic.
The Hyper-V host should have access to this adapter for administrative purposes.
https://www.altaro.com/hyper-v/the-hype ... ed-part-1/

Remaining NIC ports for VM traffic using SET (Switch Embedded Team):

PCIe Slot 15 Port 2
Broadcom NetXtreme Gigabit Ethernet#2
PCIe Slot 15 Port 3
Broadcom NetXtreme Gigabit Ethernet3
PCIe Slot 15 Port 4
Broadcom NetXtreme Gigabit Ethernet#4

Create a NewVMSwtich Switch Embedded Teaming (SET)
New-VMSwitch -Name "SET-Team" -NetAdapterName "PCIe Slot 15 Port 2","PCIe Slot 15 Port 3","PCIe Slot 15 Port 4" -EnableEmbeddedTeaming $true -AllowManagementOS $false
Set-VMSwitchTeam -Name "SET-Team" -LoadBalancingAlgorithm Dynamic
Get-VMSwitchTeam -Name "SET-Team" | FL
Get-VMSwitch

The SET-TEAM VMSwitch is used by the VMs for VM traffic,as it is best practice to isolate VM traffic from management traffic.
We don't "Allow the management OS to share this network adapter" as it can lead to resource contention and degraded performance for both the VMs and the management OS.

Distribution Modes

We have a choice of 2 LB distribution modes for SET Teams

Hyper-V Port
Dynamic

Use Dynamic as "Hyper-V port mode is not the best if you are only hosting a few VMs due to it not being granular enough to achieve a well-balanced distribution"

Thank you

Steve

[benthomas]

Hey there,

I have so many questions

For starters how many switches are the NICs connecting to? Eg. 2 Switches with 2 ports going to each switch?
Isolating management traffic, are you expecting to run backup traffic across the management NICs? And you're expecting to cause resource contention when backups are running?
If it's backup traffic, have you thought about using Veeam Traffic Rules? https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backu ... ml?ver=120

Any reason you wouldn't just split the 4 ports, 2 for management switch and 2 for VM traffic? Do you expect with 2 VMs to need more?