Wednesday, November 4, 2015

Connecting Hyper-V Guests to the Network

Today I set up Hyper-V (Microsoft's virtualization technology) for the first time. It was very easy for the most part; the only strange thing was the connection of the VM to the network. The Network Adapter dropdown only contained "Not Connected", so I was uncertain as to how to allow the VM to see the real network.

Apparently, a virtual network has to be created before a VM can be connected. That can be accomplished by opening the Virtual Network Manager (if you're running Windows Server 2008 or 2008 R2) or the Virtual Switch Manager (if you're on anything newer). That entry can be found in the Actions pane of the Hyper-V Manager snap-in for MMC.

To create the virtual network/switch, select the desired type ("External" allows connections to the real network) and press the Create button. Set the name if desired, and OK out of the network window. The network/switch now appears in the Network Connections dropdown.

It would be nice if Hyper-V included an external network/switch by default to minimize confusion. At least the connection bridge works with a minimum of fuss - that feature has given me trouble in both VirtualBox and VMware Player.

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