I have a set of physical hosts with Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 installed. Each physical host has the Hyper-V role installed and is configured to be part of a failover cluster (called cluster0).
Here is the example I need to replicate on my cluster. (This example is implemented on a single, non-clustered host). I one virtual machine configured as my gateway with the Routing and Remote Access (and NAT) role installed. This virtual machine has two virtual network interfaces: one Internal (to communicate with the physical host) and one Private (to communicate with virtual machines on the same network). All additional virtual machines have a single virtual network interface which is connected to the Private network. All virtual machines in the private network are able to communicate with each other as well as the outside world (because of NAT/gateway). I have multiple sets of this configuration that communicate with each other through the gateways but the private traffic remains on that network. Also, each analogous virtual machine across private networks have the same IP address.
How can I mimic this in a failover cluster? I know that Internal/Private network are isolated to a particular host, but I feel there is a way to do what I need. I can't be the only one who is interested in doing this either. Is this possible in Server 2008? Have they changed Server 2012 to allow for this?
Thank you all in advance!
Best Answer
Some options:
1) VLAN
Instead of having a separate vswitch for each private network, connect the private virtual NICs all to the same vswitch as your public network, but assign a separate VLAN for each private network. You will need to configure your real switch to accept tagged frames.
2) Dedicate one NIC per private network
Each vswitch for each private network will need a real NIC dedicated to that vswitch. That real NIC should be connected to the corresponding real NIC on the other server.
3) Make sure that all of the private VM's are on the same host as the gateway VM