Users Guide

Virtual Network Implementation 17
Determining a Virtual Network
Implementation
As mentioned in earlier sections, the virtual switch, or vSwitch, forms the
core of all the Microsoft
®
Hyper-V
®
Server 2008 virtual networks.
NOTE: The virtual switch never appears as an entity or icon in the
Microsoft
®
Windows Server
®
2008 parent partitions, including the
Network Connection window. It is a logical representation.
Four virtual network options are available in Hyper-V. Each of these options
offer different advantages and disadvantages, and some are only appropriate
for special cases. The virtual network options are:
• Private virtual network
• Internal virtual network
• External virtual network
• Dedicated virtual network
NOTE: The dedicated virtual network implementation allows virtual machine
(VM) traffic to be dedicated to a specific physical network port instead of
being shared between VMs and the parent partition. The dedicated virtual
network is the preferred implementation for most deployments of Hyper-V.
Private Virtual Network
In Hyper-V, you can use the private virtual network to allow network
communications between VMs on a host. Private virtual network is the first of
the three virtual switch configuration modes that you can configure from the
Hyper-V GUI.
When you select and configure the private virtual network:
• A virtual switch is created and made available for VMs. See the vSwitch #1
in Figure 4-1.