Creating a virtual network - Hyper-V Tutorial

- [Instructor] As you may recall, when we set up Hyper-V, we created a virtual network by designating one of the physical network adapters for use with virtual machine traffic. Now I want to show you what that looks like and I want to show you how to create additional virtual machine networks. So as you can see, we're in the Hyper-V Manager, and right now I've got my host server selected. It's HYPER-V-1 right here where my mouse pointer is. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to click on the link for Virtual Switch Manager. Now, if you don't have a link for Virtual Switch Manager, then just double check to make sure that the host server is selected, because if you're selecting a virtual machine instead, which we don't have any virtual machines at the moment, but if you were to select a virtual machine, then this menu right here is going to be a little bit different. So just go ahead and click on the host server, which, again, is right here. So I'm going to go ahead and click on Virtual Switch Manager. And when I do, you can see that the Hyper-V Manager opens up the Virtual Switch Manager, and we have a few different options here. First, we have New virtual network switch, then we have our existing virtual network switch. And you can see that right now this one switch that we do have for use by our virtual machines is connected to an external network, and you can see that we've bound a physical network adapter to that virtual switch. And if we wanted to switch this to a different network adapter, we could do that by clicking on the dropdown and choosing a different network adapter. So let's take a look at how to create a new virtual network switch. So what I'm going to do is click on New virtual network switch. And when I do, we've got three different choices as far as what type of virtual network switch that we want to create. So the first option is to create a private virtual network switch. Now, a private virtual network switch is a switch that is local to the host server. So in other words, the virtual machines that you bind to the switch that you're creating can communicate with one another, but they can't talk to the host operating system and they can't access anything in the outside world, so they can't access the internet and they can't access other servers that are located elsewhere on your network. The next option is an internal virtual network switch. And an internal network switch is very similar to a private virtual network switch, but with one key difference. When you create an internal virtual network switch, the virtual machines that are on that internal network are able to communicate with your Hyper-V host server if necessary. And then the third option, which is the option that we're going to be using for this course, is an external virtual network switch. The virtual network switch that I showed you a minute ago, this switch right here, is an external virtual switch. You'll notice that it's designated with external network, and it's bound to a physical ethernet adapter. So that's what makes the external virtual network switch unique, is that an external virtual network switch is bound to a physical ethernet adapter and it is able to communicate with the internet and with the rest of your network. So let's go ahead and create an external virtual network switch. So once again, I'm going to click on New virtual network switch, and then I'm going to make sure External is selected. And I'll click on Create virtual switch. So the first thing that we have to do is assign a name, and I'm just going to call the switch Example Switch, (keyboard clacking) and it's connected to external network, and then we have to choose the adapter that we want to bind the switch to. So I'm going to click on the dropdown and I'm just going to choose Microsoft Hyper-V Network Adapter #3, and there's a checkbox to allow the management operating system to share the network adapter. Typically, you're going to want to leave that selected. And so at this point I simply click OK, and I get a message saying that pending changes may disrupt network connectivity. That's fine, I'll go ahead and click Yes. And the switch is created. So the way that we can verify that that switch is created is by clicking on the Virtual Switch Manager. Here's the virtual network switch that already existed. This is the one that was created automatically when we set up Hyper-V. And then here's our new virtual network switch that we just created a second ago. So that's how you create a virtual network in Microsoft Hyper-V.