HyperV dedicated physical adapter for Client OS or the same virtual adapter for Host OS & Virtual OS

Question

I have a Windows machine with HyperV and Client OS (Windows too). This machine have two physical Ethernet adapters (both 1Gb/s).

Adapters are connected now to the same router and ISP.

Hyper V can create virtual switch with access from Host OS.

Is there any difference between:

1. Use single physical adapter for Host and Client OS (external type + access from Host OS)
2. Use both physical adapters: one for Host (without virtual switch) and one for Client OS (external type without access from the Host OS).

Thank you.

Answer 1

It really depends on how many users and the network load on your VM's. I've gone as far as putting backups on their own physical adapters with the backup server and backup interfaces on their own switch. I did this because the file server runs hourly incremental backups that sometimes are 50GB in size due to graphics files that change. I was getting complaints that file transfers would get slow during the backup window as the backups were using up most of the available bandwidth.

So you must look at your network load and determine if putting different VM's on different adapters makes sense for you. If this is a 5 user office with 2 VM's probably not if 100 users with 5 VM' then probably.

In addition putting the VMhost on it's own separate physical interface probably won't make any difference, unless you put it on its own separate switch in case of the main switch failure.