Ultimate Hyper-V Deployment Guide

For this you will need to connect to your servers IPMI, eg iLO/iDRAC, for this setup I have Dell servers so I will be showing you through iDRAC
My servers use iDRAC 8 but will show this through on iDRAC 9 on another server, iDRAC 10 is the same

We will be connecting to the virtual console and connecting the ISO and installing that way, now due to how slow the transfer speeds are, the install can take hours, I highly recommend you burn a Windows Server install USB with rufus, insert the USB into the server and use F11 at boot for the one time boot menu and install via that as it will take less than 30 mins, depending on your USB instead, but the method in iDRAC is shown so it can be done even if you dont have direct access

In iDRAC 9/10 you can see the virtual console box in the bottom right, click the box

Click Virtual Media

Then Connect Virtual Media

Under Map CD/DVD click Choose File

Double click your Windows ISO

Then click Map Device

Now click Close

Click Boot on the top bar

Then click Virtual CD/DVD/ISO

And click Yes

Then click power

And Reset System

Then click Yes

The system will then automatically boot to the ISO we set
On HPE iLO systems, you will need to press F11 to get to the one time boot menu and select the ISO to boot from

When it boots you’ll need to press any key to boot to the installer 

Click Enter here

This will then take quite a while to load, but when it does select your install language and time format and click Next

Select your keyboard type and click Next

Select the radio button to Install Windows Server, check the box agreeing everything will be destroyed and click Next

For now click I Dont Have A Product Key, we’ll add one later

Select your server license version, I have datacenter licenses so I selected that, the desktop experience means you get a GUI, so its not server core
We will be adding the GUI for this, it cannot be changed after the installation, but its more beginner friendly, then click Next

Accept the EULA

We now need to select our boot device, this should be a redundant RAID 1 device so you can sustain a disk failure, an example is a Dell BOSS card, or the HPE NS204i-U, for me this is my 186GB SSD, so I selected this and clicked Next

Then click Install

Wait for the server to reboot and set the administrator password and click Finish
The server should boot Windows automatically unless you have edited the default boot order

For this type of setup I have two Dell OS 9 switches setup in a VLT stack

All ports are configured individually with no port channels/trunks/lags or LACP 

Lets take a look a host 1 for how the networking is configured

We have NIC1-4 for our 10Gb NICs

Switch 1 we have

• NIC 1 – Te0/1
• NIC 3 – Te0/2

Switch 2 we have

• NIC 2 – Te0/1
• NIC 4 – Te0/2

We will be using NIC1/2 for the SET switch with Management/VM/Live Migration/Cluster Heartbeat traffic, and NIC 3/4 for storage over iSCSI
This was all switches have redundancy baked in at the switch level

The storage switch ports will be the easier ones to configure, so lets start there, as there is only 1 VLAN, we set our iSCSI VLAN as the Native/Access VLAN on these ports
Your SAN will be configured in one of two ways, either with a pool of IPs on one network, or two networks, also referred to as fault domains

I prefer to have the same network as its simpler in my opinion and two separate networks doesnt really change anything, but some SANs mandate one setup over the other

My SAN has one network for both controllers, so I will set both ports to have a native/untagged VLAN of 2000, my iSCSI VLAN
If you have two networks, you tag one port with one VLAN and the other with the second
Here is the config change I made, my switch mandates I enter a tagged VLAN, so I added a VLAN that I will never use, your switch may not require this

My switch default to having jumbo frames enabled, for MTUs higher than 1500
You ideally want this, but you must ensure your SAN is setup for it, if you are unsure, dont configure this as while it will net better performance, it will cause issues if its not done right

For a command line style config, this is what my port has

interface TenGigabitEthernet 0/2
mtu 12000
portmode hybrid
switchport
vlan tagged 4092
vlan untagged 2000

And thats my storage network ports ready from the switch side

Now for the SET team NICs, the remaining couple

First, you need to decide on your native VLAN, this is what all untagged traffic will be placed on, now most people opt for the network they use the most, usually the server VLAN, this can reduce security as an untagged VM will be on this network
But which you opt for is up to you, in my case I will be using the server VLAN as it will be the most used, and in Hyper-V you have to tag every VM, so this makes my management a little easier, and this means we will run through tagging the windows management interface, so how to do that is there is you do the same setup

So I want VLAN 33 as my native VLAN and I want to trunk 30-32 down to the hosts, my config looked like this

Again here, I also have the MTU set to over 1500, I recommend 9216, this is usually the maximum the switches can handle, but if you are unsure, stick with the default, especially for the SET switch as we dont really need a high MTU

The command line config for my switches looked like this

interface TenGigabitEthernet 0/1
mtu 12000
portmode hybrid
switchport
vlan tagged 30-32
vlan untagged 33

The important thing with any VLT/VSX/MC-Lag system, is that both switches are configured identically

As we dont have networking, with our Management network being tagged, we need to create the SET switch from your servers IPMI, in my case, the iDRAC

The first thing we will want to do is rename those NICs to something a little easier to understand, open up Control Panel

Click Network And Internet

Then Network And Caring Center

On the right, click Change Adapter Settings on the left

Right click the NIC and click Rename

My NIC oddly wouldnt open the rename box, so if you click the NIC and then press F12 this allows you to rename it

From the switch setup section we said NIC1/2 were for the set switch, so I called this one SET1

And repeated on NIC2 to call it SET2

I repeated for the iSCSI NICs and ended up with this

Next lets search for PowerShell and click Run As Administrator

If we then run

Get-NetAdapter

We can see our NICs

Now we need to create the management switch and allow the management vNIC to run on it with

New-VMSwitch -Name "<vSwitch Name>" -NetAdapterName "NICx","NICy" -EnableEmbeddedTeaming $true -AllowManagementOS $false

So for my server I ran

New-VMSwitch -Name "VM-Host-SET" -NetAdapterName "SET1","SET2" -EnableEmbeddedTeaming $true -AllowManagementOS $false

The output will look something like this

Now we need to setup the management vNIC and set the VLAN which we can do with this command

Add-VMNetworkAdapter -ManagementOS -Name "<vNIC-Name>" -SwitchName "<SET-Switch>"
Set-VMNetworkAdapterVlan -ManagementOS -VMNetworkAdapterName "<vNIC-Name>" -Access -VlanId <VLAN-ID>

So for my setup I ran

Add-VMNetworkAdapter -ManagementOS -Name "Management-VM-Host-SET" -SwitchName "VM-Host-SET"
Set-VMNetworkAdapterVlan -ManagementOS -VMNetworkAdapterName "Management-VM-Host-SET" -Access -VlanId 30

Now our management vNIC is on the right VLAN we can set the IP address from Control Panel back in Network And Internet

Then click Network And Sharing Center

Then select the vEthernet adapter

Click Properties

Double click IPv4

We can then enter our IP information for the host IP, subnet, gateway and DNS servers, then click ok, ok and close all the dialogue boxes
Its worth noting the DNS servers need to be your Windows DNS servers so they can join the domain properly, these are likely your Domain Controllers

We can now see ping tests are working to the Internet and the Gateway

We first need to add our server roles, Server Manager should be open, if not you can search for it and open it

Click Local Server, then the ‘Disabled’ link next to Remote Desktop

Check the radio button to allow remote connections

And click ok here

Then click ok

Now we have the management configured and RDP enabled we can connect that way to set the rest of the vNICs up

We now need a Cluster Heartbeat network, so I can run the following in PowerShell

Add-VMNetworkAdapter -ManagementOS -Name "<vNIC-Name>" -SwitchName "<SET-Switch>"
Set-VMNetworkAdapterVlan -ManagementOS -VMNetworkAdapterName "<vNIC-Name>" -Access -VlanId <VLAN-ID>

My environment needs the VLAN to be 32 for this network, the vNIC name I wanted was Cluster-Heartbeat-VM-Host-SET and my SET switch is called VM-Host-SET, so I ran the following

Add-VMNetworkAdapter -ManagementOS -Name "Cluster-Heartbeat-VM-Host-SET" -SwitchName "VM-Host-SET"
Set-VMNetworkAdapterVlan -ManagementOS -VMNetworkAdapterName "Cluster-Heartbeat-VM-Host-SET" -Access -VlanId 32

For the Live Migration network, its the same command with the corresponding name/VLAN, so I ran

Add-VMNetworkAdapter -ManagementOS -Name "Live-Migration-VM-Host-SET" -SwitchName "VM-Host-SET"
Set-VMNetworkAdapterVlan -ManagementOS -VMNetworkAdapterName "Live-Migration-VM-Host-SET" -Access -VlanId 31

We can verify all this by running

Get-NetAdapter

And like with the management networks we can click the vEthernet adapters in the Network And Sharing Center to apply their IPs

Now as these are not routable networks, and Windows doesnt want multiple NICs with gateways, we will configure IPv4 without a gateway or DNS is also not required, like this as an example for my Cluster Heartbeat network

And this for Live Migration

Now we can ping our Cluster Heartbeat and Live Migration IPs between the hosts to confirm this is working
Depending on your domain policies you may need to disable the firewall on Windows to test this, but it must be re enabled after

Now we have the networking sorted for Management, and the Cluster networks, we can get the server added to our DC, and set the hostname from the default

Search for and open sysdm.cpl

Click Change

Enter the new hostname and your domain and click ok

Enter domain admin credentials and click ok

When it joins the domain click ok here

Click ok again

Click Close

Then Restart Now

We now need the remaining roles to be installed for the cluster, which are

• MPIO
• Failover Clustering

1.8.1 – GUI

Open Server Manager

In the top right, click Add Roles And Features

Click Next if you have this page

Click Next again

Select the server and click Next

Click Next here

Check Failover Clustering

Click Add Features

Check Multipath I/O

Then click Next

And click Install

When thats done click Close

Install-WindowsFeature -Name Failover-Clustering, Multipath-IO -IncludeManagementTools

Now we need the iSCSI networking setup, we went through the switch configuration with just a native/access VLAN for the ports now we need to add the server IPs for it

Back in Control Panel under Network And Internet/Network And Sharing Center we can click our iSCSI NICs to edit them, lets start with iSCSI1

Click Properties

Double click IPv4

Add an IP on the iSCSI network for this NIC
My iSCSI network is large in the lab, but is running on
10.2.0.0/22
We dont need DNS or a gateway, this should be a flat L2 network with no routability to it, most are configured as a /24
Once its set click ok

Click ok again

Then Close

And repeat for iSCSI2, this wants a separate IP, as my SAN doesnt require two networks, sometimes referred to a fault domains, but one flat network, iSCSI2 is on the same network, if your SAN has IPs on two VLANs you likely want an IP in the second subnet here, and the port will need to be set on that VLAN

Here was my config

My SAN has 4 IPs, and if I ping them we can see thats working, so we know the IPs are configured correctly

Now there is one more change we need to make around MTU, and if you havent got your switches on all iSCSI ports, SAN ports, and the SAN its self using an MTU of 9000, do not change this, only set this is if you know what you are doing

Click the NIC and then click Properties again, but this time click Configure

Click Advanced/Jumbo Packet and set the drop down to 9014 then click ok

And repeat on iSCSI2

Now we want to test jumbo frames are working, we can use a ping packet size greater than 1500, but I will use 8800 since its right at the top of 9000, so ensures we dont have odd packet fragmentation is lower MTU values

To do this in powershell run

ping <SAN-IP> -f -l <MTU-Size>

For I ran the following for all my SAN IPs

ping 10.2.0.1 -f -l 8800
ping 10.2.0.2 -f -l 8800
ping 10.2.0.3 -f -l 8800
ping 10.2.0.4 -f -l 8800

And the output was this, so we know iSCSI will work at higher MTUs

This wont walk you through how to setup and provision volumes from your SAN, as there are many different vendors and the process is similar but different for each of them, this will be how to access those disks

But we will first point Windows at the SAN, this usually pre populates the initiator on the SAN making things a lot easier to then configure the SAN

Then configure the SAN and Windows can pick the disks up

So at the point I have done zero configuration for Volumes on my SAN

Open the iSCSI Initiator software

Click Yes here

In the Targets box add the SAN IPs, your SAN may have multiple like mine, or a VIP address where if you connect to that everything else is populated

When you have your SAN IP added click Quick Connect

This will hang in Windows, as we have no volumes mapped
We can click Done here, this should populate the IQN on the SAN

Sadly, my SAN doesnt do this, most will however

So I will walk you through what I did on mine, now as I dont have a conventional SAN, Eg MSA/PowerVault/PowerStore/Alletra/Pure, I am using the iSCSI service on my VMware vSAN, so this part wont show you how to configure those SANs but I have included the steps as the general principle is the same for all SANs

First we need to create an initiator group, now if you point Windows at the SAN these will be auto generated, mine arent so I will manually create the group and add the initiators

We can grab the Initiator Name from Configuration

Then I create the group and add the initiators, you should be able to select them, but I added mine manually, either works, what is important is the group contains the imitator names exactly as you seem them in Windows

We then create some volumes, I have a volume group, we need a minimum of two disks

• Quorum – 10GB
• VM Data Disks

The VM data part can be any size, though I recommend more smaller ones for better performance, you can add however many of these you like at a time, I am using two as an example

Then you add the host imitator group we create earlier to this volume group, or the individual volumes if you didnt use a group

Now I filled that out on my SAN Windows has already connected to my SAN initiator

And checking in disk manager my SAN disks are there
You should notice that the disks are duplicated in 

Now, if your SAN multiple IPs and not a VIP, add those in quick connect as well
Under Discovery I have all my SAN IPs as I dont have a VIP

MPIO is how we fix the duplicated disks, as there are multiple paths to the disks they are duplicated, we need to tell Windows that there are multiple paths and they should still be treated as one disk

Search and open MPIO

Click the Discover Multi-Paths tab and check the box to add support for iSCSI devices and click ok

Before we can start creating the cluster we need an AD OU, the cluster object will be in the same OU as the Hyper-V servers so its important we sort this first

Where you put this is entirely up to you, I am putting this in Lab Computers/Servers, and in there I will right click the last OU click New/Organisation Unit

Give it a name, as I only have one Hyper-V cluster I called mine Hyper-V, you may want to create that OU and if you have multiple clusters create another OU beneath for each cluster 
When you are done click ok

Now all the Hyper-V hosts will be the default OU, Computers, when you join machines, select them all and drag them into the new OU for this cluster, in my Case Hyper-V
Bare in mind, all GPOs that OU inherits will be applied to these servers

And click Yes

Now we have our OU we need to prep the cluster computer object to avoid some validation issues

Right click the OU and click New/Computer

Name this exactly what you plan to call the cluster, this is very important, then click ok

Now we have our object we need to modify the permissions it has

In AD click View at the top, then Advanced Features

Right click the OU the cluster object is in, then click Properties

Click the Security Tab, then Advanced

Click Add in the bottom left

Click Select A Principle

Click Object Types

Check Computers and click ok

Enter the cluster object name, mine is HV-CLS, exactly and click ok

In the bottom left, you may need to scroll down, ensure Create Computer Objects is checked, and ensure, in the top left, Read All properties is checked, then click ok

Click ok again

And ok again

Lastly, we want to right click the cluster computer object and click Disable Account, so it is ready for the cluster creation

Then click Yes

Now we have the object prepped, we can setup the cluster, we will need an IP address on the same subnet as the Hyper-V host management
My hosts are on VLAN 30 with these IPs

• 172.16.30.11/24
• 172.16.30.12/24
• 172.16.30.13/24

My host IP will be
172.16.30.10/24

On one of the Hyper-V hosts search and open Failover Cluster Manager

In the top right, right click Failover Cluster Manager and click Create Cluster

Click Next here

Click Browse

All my hosts start with HV, so I put that in then clicked Check Names

Enter domain admin credentials and click ok

As we searched with the hv prefix it will bring up all our servers, use Ctrl to select multiple servers and select all the servers you want to add into the cluster
Ensure you do not select the cluster object
Then click ok

Click ok here

The hosts should get added and it will look like this, then click Next

Make sure the option to validate the cluster is checked, and click Next

For the validation, click Next

Click Next here and run all tests, this will take a minute to load

Click Next again

This will take a while to run through all the validations, when its done click View Report

We want to review any warnings for any reason we might have issues

In Network, my adapters flagged for an RDMA consistency issue, this is important to check, as I am not using RDMA capable adapters I can ignore this, if you are, we dont need to do anything, just ensure all adapters are the exact same model running the same firmware

The other System Configuration warning was for software patch levels
It is recommended to have all servers on the same KB, unless you are actively patching the cluster, so I will remediate these before continuing
Interestingly it thinks HV03 is fine, which it isnt when I manually checked Windows updates#

When all updates are applied we can verify the build number by opening the Settings app

Click System

Scroll down to the bottom and click About

And ensure the OS build is identical on all nodes

Once thats all sorted, we need to enter the cluster name, this needs to be identical to the object we created earlier
I called my object HV-CLS so thats what I entered, and add the IP address we want to associate with it, then click Next

And click Next here

When thats done click Finish

Now we have a cluster, we need some VM storage, and we have got our disks mapped, but offline, so lets get those online

On the first host, for me this is HV01 open disk management by right clicking the Windows icon

Right click all disks added by iSCSI, in my case 1x10GB and 2x1TB disks and click Online

Then click Initialize Disk

On my server I have made all three online, these are disk 4/5/6, and when initializing the first it lets us do them all, so lets do that, making sure GPT is selected and not MBR, then click ok

We will then need to do this for all disks added by iSCSI, right click the unallocated area and click New Simple Volume

Click Next

Next again, we dont need to change anything

Next again

Fill in the Volume Label and click Next

Then click Finish

For the data disks I suggest naming them the same as you did in the SAN so it all lines up
Now there is one small issue, I have two identical volumes, so which is which, this is what we had on the SAN

Now the ID is the LUN ID, it can be called either, but whatever SAN vendor you have, each disk will have a LUN ID
In Windows, if you right click the unallocated space and click Properties

The location will tell you the LUN ID so you can match them up

When you are done it should look like this
It can take a while on much larger LUNs to format the disk

If we open Disk Management on our other hosts, you may need to rescan with this icon

They should look like this

Right click the disk, like before, and click Online

And repeat for all disks so it now looks like the first host

Repeat this on all remaining cluster hosts

Back in Failover Cluster Manager, click Storage, then right click Disks and click Add Disk

We should see all the disks checked, click ok

They dont carry their names over that we set on Windows, this is fine, click the disk

At the bottom we can see the Windows name

On the right click Properties

Here we can set the name and click ok

Repeat until you have them all, it should look like this

Click the first data disk

And on the right click Add To Shared Volumes

We now see the disks Assigned To has changed to reflect this

Repeat for all other data disks, but importantly not the quorum, like this

You’ll notice in disk manager they are marked as offline and reserved, this is expected and do not edit this as you will break the volume
The disk is only online for the Owner Node

We now have shared volumes to store our VMs

A cluster quorum should always be configured, as it helps the cluster make a decision in split brain situations
To configure this right click the cluster then click More Actions/Configure Cluster Quorum Settings

Click Next here

Select the middle option to manually select the quorum witness and click Next

Click Configure Disk Witness, there are other methods, but with the SAN being highly available this is by far the best, then click Next

Select our quorum disk and click Next
You’ll notice our shared volumes are not here, this is why we didnt make the quorum disk a shared disk

Click Next

Then click Finish

To access this, in Failover Cluster Manager, click Networks

We can see our networks, but they arent named very helpfully, click one, lets start with Cluster Network 1

At the bottom this small subpage will be populated, here we can see the subnet, and so we know this is the iSCSI network

If you click the Network connections you can see the NICs attached

For iSCSI there are two NICs per host, the others show the vNICs we created on the SET switch

If we then click Properties on the right

We can rename it and click ok

On the management cluster network we can change the name and click ok

You will see this informational message box, we can ignore this and click ok

For the cluster network we want to ensure we dont have the box to allow clients to connect checked, and click ok

And the same for Live Migration

On the right, irrelevant of what network you have selected, we have the Live Migration Settings button, click this

Remove all networks except for the Live Migration network and click ok

The spec for WAC wants to be 

• 4vCPU
• 8GB
• 90GB C Drive

We now need a virtual machine on Windows Server for WAC to run on, you will need to place the ISO for your version of Windows server on the cluster storage
The default location for the cluster storage is C:\ClusterStorage, then you will have your volumes

Once the ISO is copied over we need to create our VM, in Failover Cluster Manager, expand the cluster and right click Role, then click Virtual Machines/New Virtual Machine

Select a node with space, as this is our first VM, it doesnt matter which node we select, then click ok

Click Next here

Give the VM a name and check the box to storge the files in a different location and click Browse

This must be one of the volumes under C:\ClusterStorage
Then click Next

Select the VM generation, this will likely always want to be Generation 2 then click Next

Enter the amount of RAM the VM needs in MB, I want my WAC server to have 8GB so I entered 8192, then click Next

For the networking, click the Connection drop down and select the SET switch we created earlier, and click Next

Enter a name for the virtual hard disk, I appended -C to the default, as this will be the C drive, and enter a size, for this 90GB is plenty, then click Next

We now want to select the radio button to install an operating system from a CD/DVD ROM, then the radio button for Image File, and click Browse

Double click the ISO you have on the cluster storage

And click Next

Then click Finish

And Finish again

Now our VM exists, but before we boot it, there are a couple of bits we need to change, click the VM and on the right click Settings

Click into the Processor tab, the default here seems to be 16 for me, which is way too much, set this to 4, for our 4vCPU in the specs

Now, from our networking config all VMs are put onto VLAN 33 by default, the VM VLAN, but this VM is management and so I want it on the management VLAN
So click the Network Adapter, check Enable Virtual LAN Identification, and enter the VLAN tag, in my case 30, then click ok
Its worth noting, as VLAN 33, our default VM VLAN, is the native VLAN on the ports the SET switch uses, if we want VMs on this VLAN we do not need to tag them like this, and if you do, they wont get any networking

On the right, we can now click Start, and then Connect and install Windows like normal
I recommend you install the GUI, Desktop Experience, for installing and configuring WAC

Now download WAC, it can be found here
Double click the installer

Click Yes here

Click Next

Accept the EULA and click Next

Use the default Express Setup and click Next

As I am not bothered about certificates for the WAC UI I am using the self signed option, but you can use your own with the first option, then click Next

Make sure you select the radio button for automatic updates and click Next

Click Next again

And click Install

And click Finish

The installer will put the firewall rule in when its deployed so it can be accessed from other servers
The UI can be found on
https://fqdn

You can login by default with any Domain admin in the form
domain\user
For example

We can add additional groups from the settings menu, in the top right on the gear icon

Click Gateway/Access then click Add to add an AD group

The group wants to be in the format, for an admin group, select the role Gateway Administrators
domain\group_name
The group name, cant have spaces

When its added click Save at the bottom

Now users in that group will be able to login as admins

From the main menu, you can click Windows Admin Center in the top left to get back there, and click Add

Click Add on Server Clusters

Enter the cluster FQDN, this should auto populate the hosts after a little bit, then click Add

Now we can click the cluster to begin managing it

On the left panel from the cluster, click Virtual Machines

Enable the toggle for Detailed Mode

This gives us more info on VMs, including the guest memory pressure which is very helpful for rightsizing VMs

Click Add/New

Give the VM a name, I am building a file server, so I called it HV-FS
Keep the Generation and Host on the recommended values

On the path drop down, click a cluster volume to place the VM on, it also shows free space to help you balance the VM data around, I am using Volume 2 for this

Enter the number of vCPUs and the RAM amount

Select the virtual switch and as this VM is going on VLAN 33, the native VLAN we can leave the Isolation Mode on Default, you would add the VLAN tag here
Then click Add on Storage

Enter the capacity for the C drive, I use 90GB, you can add additional disks, I added a 500GB disk for my file server data

Now disks are added you’ll not that both the VM configuration and disks are now noted to be on the selected volume

Under Operating System click the radio button to install an OS from an ISO and click Browse

Select the ISO we uploaded earlier and click ok

Now click Create

It will take a couple of minutes to create

Once its created, click the VM, then click Power Start

We can click Connect/Download RDP File
The Connect option is really buggy and often doesnt work from what I can see

Open the RDP file, you may need to enter credentials again into the Hyper-V host
As the Windows ISO usually needs you to press a key to load you will likely see this

Click Restart Now, or if the mouse doesnt work click Tab, then Enter, and you can boot to the Windows ISO

Once Windows is installed, the default administrator account has been set and we have networking set, we can domain join the VM from WAC
Select the VM and click Manage/Domain Join

Enter the domain, domain admin credentials and the default administrator account and click Join

The machine will reboot, click Yes

We can also manage the hosts from WAC, we can click any host from the top level menu

The overview will give us a lot of information on the server

We can monitor system resources and network throughput below

The events tab gives us access to event view for Hyper-V troubleshooting

We can upload and download files from the server if needed

Firewall rules can be viewed and edited 

You can use remote powershell, though this seems to use the local administrator account
Remote desktop is also available