Maximizing Hyper-V Network Performance: Choosing the Right Virtual Network Implementation for Your Environment

The determination of virtual network implementation is based on the specific requirements and needs of the environment, including the need for isolation, external network connectivity, and support for failover clustering.

There are four choices that makes up an hyper-V networks some of which are appropriate for special cases providing different advantages and disadvantages amongst each option you'll want to implement.

These virtual networks options are

Private virtual network

Internal virtual network

External virtual network

Dedicated virtual network

The determination of the virtual network implementation comes about on how you want virtual machines to establish communication between parent partitions with virtual devices such as network and storage adapters through the VM's bus.

How does the communication determine the virtual network implementation?

Normally, parent partitions receive requests via virtual service providers VSP's, it directs them to the physical devices through I/O stack with the help of specialised device drivers, these are presented to guest operating systems through virtual machines configuration.

Now that you understand the communication let's jump to the determination of virtual network implementation

Private virtual network.

In hyper-V use the private virtual network to communicate the virtual machine and host via permission of a network adapter.

During selection and configuration of private virtual network a virtual switch is created and made available for virtual machines.

Advantage of private virtual network is that it isolates completely communication of parent partitions and the networks external.

It's disadvantage is that it is not recommended for environmental cluster failover because of localisation on each host.

Internal virtual network.

In hyper-V, use the internal virtual network to communicate virtual machines on host and virtual machines with parent partitions.

During selection and configuration of internal virtual network a virtual switch is created then made available for virtual machines and a new virtual network adapter is created then connected to the parent partitions.

Advantage of internal virtual network is that it also enables the isolation of virtual machines from the external network.

It's disadvantage is its not suitable for utilizing environmental failover clustering since it is localized to each host.

External virtual network

In hyper-V, use external virtual network to allow communication between virtual machines, parent partitions and the external network.

During selection and configuration of the external virtual network a virtual switch is created and connected to virtual machines, new virtual network adapter is created and connected to parent partition, the parent partition adapter to a virtual switch and to the physical network adapter to enable external network access.

Advantage of the external virtual network is that communication through connection and permission across all virtual devices.

Disadvantages of the external virtual network is that the second adapter can cause multiple host connectivity errors such as DNS entries, delays and incomplete resolution and routing confusion for the NetBIOS.

Also multiple browsing lists on each network adapter due to multiplication of the parent network adapter which also cause incomplete routing or confusion of the NetBIOS.

Dedicated virtual network

In hyper-V, it allows the virtual machines to communicate with other virtual machines on the same or other systems. It also grants access to the parent partitions through the external virtual network to the virtual switch.

It can not be configured directly from the virtual network manager

During its configuration the external virtual network is selected and then its adapter is modified to the parent partition.

Advantages of the dedicated virtual network

The physical network adapter is for virtual machines trafficking no sharing with the parent partition.

Disadvantages of the dedicated virtual network

Network connection window displays disabled network adapter which must not be modified through the adapter setting.

The external virtual network is best suited for environments that require connectivity between virtual machines and the external network, but it may cause connectivity issues due to the presence of multiple network adapters.

The recommendation of the determination of the virtual network implementation base on best practices for features such as iSCSI support and the environment failover clustering support.

In summary, the choice of virtual network implementation should be made based on the specific needs of the environment and the features required for optimal performance and functionality.