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I've been reading documentation until my vision is blurred.

I'm sure this has a simple solution, but all the docs I'm finding go into excruciating detail on how to set something up—nothing on whether a particular configuration is a good fit for my situation.

I have a Hyper-V 2016 host with two physical NICs. All the VMs (PDC included) are bound to a vSwitch that's bound to one of the NICs; that cable goes to a physical switch to which all the workstations are connected. Straightforward stuff. It's been working for years.

Now I need to plug a NAS device into the second physical NIC so that it can see the PDC on the first. (I can't plug the NAS into the physical switch because that switch has to stay at 10/100 for our older CAT5 cabling. The NAS needs Gb speeds. We tried a Gb switch there and we were getting intermittent dropped connections on workstations.)

Is VLAN the solution for this? Teaming? Bridging? I'm lost, I'm afraid. And my eyes are swimming for the tech docs I'm trying to decode.

The NICs are 192.168.2.11 and 192.168.2.21, respectively. The VMs are on 192.168.2.11.

--EDIT--

As it turns out, bridging is not an option. This is Hyper-V Server, so there's no GUI. Ref. here: "Network Bridge can be set up or removed only through Network Connections."

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  • Don't know about Hyper-V but with VMware you just add both NICs to the same vSwitch and configure your choice of load balancing or failover. When you use the 2nd NIC as dedicated link to the NAS you'll have to use another network address or it'll mess up the routing.
    – Zac67
    Jul 26, 2017 at 19:12
  • @Zac67 — I just checked, and alas it's a one-to-one relationship on Hyper-V. Not sure why; it sounds like a reasonable configuration.
    – InteXX
    Jul 26, 2017 at 19:23
  • @Zac67 Neither load balancing nor failover would work in this situation. Neither of those bridge. Hyper-V does support bonding for load balancing and failover, but again, that's not bridging.
    – longneck
    Jul 26, 2017 at 20:14

3 Answers 3

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  • Connect the first NIC of the server to the gigabit switch.
  • Connect the NAS to the gigabit switch.
  • Connect the 10/100 switch to the gigabit switch.
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  • I'm pretty sure I tried that yesterday when I was onsite. But I was pretty frazzled by that time, so I can't be 100% sure. It sure sounds like it should work, so I can't imagine why it didn't (if it didn't). I'll check it again next time I'm over there in a few days. In the meantime, is there a software solution I can try?
    – InteXX
    Jul 26, 2017 at 19:20
  • What version of Hyper-V is your server?
    – longneck
    Jul 26, 2017 at 19:28
  • Hyper-V Server 2016.
    – InteXX
    Jul 26, 2017 at 19:30
  • I found someone onsite who could help me with this. As it turns out, the reason it didn't work yesterday was because of a bad Gb switch. We swapped in another one and poof! everything lit right up.
    – InteXX
    Jul 26, 2017 at 20:37
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For software only options, I see two alternatives.

1) Add a vswitch attached to the second NIC of the Hyper-V host. Add a second NIC to the VM's that need access to the NAS. This second NIC (and the NAS) must be on a separate subnet from the first NIC/vswitch.

2) Add a vswitch attached to the second NIC of the Hyper-V host. Add another VM with 2 NICs, each connected to the two vswitches. Install something in that VM to do routing. This could be a linux VM, or Windows running RRAS.

(I don't think Hyper-V Server supports RRAS, but if it does, that is a third option.)

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    I like this one (#1). I wish I could give it two upvotes. I'll definitely keep it in mind for future situations. Thanks much for the writeup.
    – InteXX
    Jul 26, 2017 at 20:38
  • Do you have any suggestion for the latest problem here?
    – InteXX
    Jul 30, 2017 at 8:04
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You can set up a bridge, where both of your NICs are members. This means that your server will act as a switch, which has two ports that are your NICs.

After this, you can assign an IP address to your NAS from the 192.168.2.0/24 network.

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  • Interesting. I don't think a bridge can be created without the GUI component, though (this is Hyper-V Server). I seem to remember running into this problem a while back.
    – InteXX
    Jul 26, 2017 at 18:48

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