When a Hyper-V Virtual NIC (VNIC) interface is created in the host OS, the VNIC takes on the MAC address of the underlying physical NIC (PF, or physical function). The same is true when a VNIC is created on a team or VLAN. Since the VNIC uses the MAC address of the underlying interface, any operation that changes the MAC address of the interface (for example, setting LAA on the interface), will cause the VNIC to lose connectivity. In order to prevent this loss of connectivity, Intel PROSet will not allow you to change settings that change the MAC address.
When sent from inside a virtual machine, LLDP and LACP packets may be a security risk. The Intel Virtual Function driver blocks the transmission of such packets.
The Virtualization setting on the Advanced tab of the adapter’s Device Manager property sheet is not available if the Hyper-V role is not installed.
The Virtual Machine Switch
The virtual machine switch is part of the network I/O data path. It sits between the physical NIC and the virtual machine NICs and routes packets to the correct MAC address. Enabling Virtual Machine Queue Offloading in Intel PROSet will automatically enable VMQ in the virtual machine switch. For driver-only installations, you must manually enable VMQ in the virtual machine switch.
Intel ANS VLANs are not compatible with the Microsoft Hyper-V virtual machine switch. If you want to bind the virtual machine switch to a VLAN, you must create the VLAN from within the Virtual Switch Manager.
Using Intel ANS VLANs
See Adapter Teaming and Virtual LANs (VLANs) for more information on Intel ANS and VLANs.
If you create Intel ANS VLANs in the host OS, and you then create a Hyper-V Virtual NIC interface on an Intel ANS VLAN, then the Virtual NIC interface must have the same VLAN ID as the VLAN. Using a different VLAN ID or not setting a VLAN ID on the Virtual NIC interface will result in loss of communication on that interface.
Virtual Switches bound to an Intel ANS VLAN will have the same MAC address as the VLAN, which will have the same address as the underlying NIC or team. If you have several VLANs bound to a team and bind a virtual switch to each VLAN, all of the virtual switches will have the same MAC address. Clustering the virtual switches together will cause a network error in Microsoft’s cluster validation tool. In some cases, ignoring this error will not impact the performance of the cluster. However, such a cluster is not supported by Microsoft. Using Device Manager to give each of the virtual switches a unique address will resolve the issue. See the Microsoft TechNet article, Configure MAC Address Spoofing for Virtual Network Adapters for more information.
Virtual Machine Queues (VMQ) and SR-IOV cannot be enabled on a Hyper-V Virtual NIC interface bound to a VLAN configured using the VLANs tab in Windows Device Manager.
Using an Intel ANS Team or VLAN as a Virtual NIC
If you want to use a team or VLAN as a virtual NIC, you must follow these steps:
Use Intel PROSet to create the team or VLAN.
Open the Network Control Panel.
Open the team or VLAN.
On the General Tab, uncheck all of the protocol bindings and click OK.
Create the virtual NIC. (If you check the “Allow management operating system to share the network adapter.” box you can do the following step in the host OS.)
Open the Network Control Panel for the Virtual NIC.
On the General Tab, check the protocol bindings that you desire.
Note: This step is not required for the team. When the Virtual NIC is created, its protocols are correctly bound.
These steps apply only to virtual NICs created on a team or VLAN. Virtual NICs created on a physical adapter do not require these steps.
Receive Load Balancing (RLB) is not supported in Hyper-V. Disable RLB when using Hyper-V.
Command Line for Microsoft Windows Server Core
Microsoft Windows Server Core does not have a GUI interface. If you want to use an Intel ANS Team or VLAN as a Virtual NIC, you must use Microsoft Windows PowerShell to set up the configuration. Use Windows PowerShell to create the team or VLAN.
The following is an example of how to set up the configuration using Microsoft Windows PowerShell:
Get all the adapters on the system and store them into a variable:
$a = Get-IntelNetAdapter
Create a team by referencing the indexes of the stored adapter array:
New-IntelNetTeam -TeamMembers $a[1],$a[2] -TeamMode VirtualMachineLoadBalancing -TeamName "Team1"
