Getting QoS Right with Hyper-V and Converged Networking

Back in the "olden days" of Windows Server 2008 R2, getting networking right for a Hyper-V private cloud was simple.  Annoying - yes.  But simple.  Basically - you just had to have a separate network adapter (or two) for every class of traffic possible.

Thankfully with Windows Server 2012 (and 2012 R2) there are a number of ways to converge networking and you can now effectively run on only two of four network adapters.  While this is nice - it does raise a problem: how do you make sure that everyone gets the network bandwidth that they need?

You see - the different classes of traffic in a Hyper-V private cloud have very different behaviors and requirements.

• Some are low bandwidth - but critical (like the cluster heart beat and remote management)
• Some are medium to high bandwidth - and fairly constant (like virtual machine storage)
• Some are high bandwidth - but sporadic (like live migration)

And making everything work smoothly can be challenging.  Fortunately we have some great documentation that is available here:

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj735302.aspx

This steps through some of the common converged network configuration that we see - and tells you how to configure QoS (quality of service) settings to ensure that the right thing happens in your environment.

Cheers,
Ben