MS Hyper-V with VLANs

I just got a new mini server for my lab to run multiple virtual clients on. I ran into a huge show stopper trying to get VLANs working. Turn out that Intel NIC drivers filter VLANs so when your VM is configured to tag its traffic with a particular VLAN the host driver is discarding those packets. To get this fixed you need to modify the registry because the Intel Driver Control Panel does not have the option to disable this behavior. Search your register for "VlanFiltering" and modify its value from "1" to "0" to disable the filtering.

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/forums/en-US/winserverhyperv/thread/11584256-b924-4945-a2f4-aefca0c3a43a/
Specifically by MikeLaschaThe Intel's were a tougher nut to crack as the settting is not exposed through the NIC's Advanced Properties, but only through the registry . Changing the HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{GUID}\XXXX\VlanFiltering registry key (where {GUID} is the GUID containing the network adapter configuration and XXXX is the NIC to be confgured) from 1 to 0 and rebooting corrects the issue. The easiest way to find the proper key in your system is to use the find command in regedit with enough of the network adapter name (i.e. for the Intel's, find "1000 PT").Identifying a registry key to enable this support actually turned out to be a plus since I was able to use it to get VLAN support working in server core. So now I can use the Broadcom’s as originally planned (for host and cluster NIC’s), and the Intel’s for VM public and/or iSCSI connectivity.

Update: 12/1/08
I tried to reproduce this again on an ALB Team. I had to create/delete a VLAN from Intel ProSet before it would work. This must have enabled VLAN tagging in the registry. I could not find any other way to enable VLAN tagging on the team.

Low Profile Lab Server

I just got a new server for my lab to help with my testing of an open source WAN acceleration project I have been helping with called trafficsqueezer. Its a pretty neat little box, and is what I plan on putting in each of our office once the software is production ready. Until then I will be using it to run multiple client VMs for testing trafficsqueezer.

Here are the system specs:

• Supermicro CSE-510-200B Chassis
• Supermicro X7SBL-LN2 Motherboard
• Intel Xeon X3320 2.5GHz Quad-Core CPU
• 4GB PC 6400 ECC Memory
• 4x 2.5" Western Digital 250GB 7200rpm Drives

Installing the CPU

Installing the Memory.

Putting the board in the chassing, and installing the drives.

Server 2008, and Hyper-V installed.

Overall I am very impressed with this little thing. Getting the SATA, and power cables connected were a pain. I think 6" or 10" SATA cables will be on order soon to help get rid of some of the extra cable in the case.

Here you can see exactly what is in this system.

http://secure.newegg.com/WishList/PublicWishDetail.aspx?WishListNumber=7804451

Update 4-29-2009:

I just built a 2nd one of these. They each now have 6GB of ram, and only 2x 250GB drives. Should be great for testing TraffiSqueezer