This procedure uses the cluster name to log in to the Virtual Machine Manager management server to check connectivity.
1. On VMM01, log on as contoso\administrator.
2. Double-click the System Center Virtual Machine Manager console icon.
3. For the connection properties, enter VMM-HA:8100, which is the highly available Virtual Machine Manager cluster created in Procedure 26.
Configuring network
infrastructure
ogical networks are the first building block in the foundation of network sites, IP address pools, and logical switches, all of which are discussed in this chapter. In this configuration walkthrough, you will configure three logical networks. To these logical networks, Microsoft System Center 2012 R2 Virtual Machine Manager will apply standard configurations and addressing schemas for tenant and datacenter traffic. It is important to define logical networks and IP address schemas for the different types of traffic because it will enable you to easily manage virtual machines (VMs) and host operations at scale.
You start by creating a logical network and IP address pool for the tenant network. You can use a logical network to organize and simplify network assignments for hosts, VMs, and services. In addition, you can use logical networks to describe networks that have different purposes, to create traffic isolation, and even to support traffic that requires different types of service-level agreements (SLAs). As part of logical network creation, you can create network sites to define the Virtual Local Area Networks (VLANs) and IP subnets, and IP subnet and VLAN pairs, and then associate them with the logical network in different physical locations.
A logical network, together with one or more associated network sites, is a user-defined named grouping of IP subnets, VLANs, or IP subnet and VLAN pairs that is used to organize and simplify network assignments.
Configuration walkthrough
In the following sections, you will walk through the key steps required to set up the network infrastructure in System Center Virtual Machine Manager. At this stage, you don’t have any hosts under management. But because you’re configuring the network infrastructure first, these steps will streamline the process of deploying VMs and service when the time comes.
Figure 3-1 depicts the logical and physical layers of a virtualized networking infrastructure. As you go through this chapter, you'll build each piece of the model and configure the System Center Virtual Machine Manager network fabric that you will use in this proof-of-concept (POC) configuration. This chapter covers the layers in the model in the order that you would
build them, starting with logical networks, rather than working from top to bottom of the diagram in Figure 3-1.
FIGURE 3-1 Logical and physical network layers
Logical networks
A logical network is a user-defined named grouping of IP subnets and VLANs or groupings of pairs of IP subnets and VLANs that is used to identify, organize, and simplify network
assignments. Some possible examples include “BACKEND,” “FRONTEND,” “LAB,”
“MANAGEMENT,” and “BACKUP.” Because logical networks represent an abstraction of the underlying physical network infrastructure, they enable you to model the network based on business function and connectivity properties.
After you have created a logical network, you can use it to specify the network on which to deploy a host or a VM (as a standalone or as part of a service). Administrators can assign logical networks as part of VM and service creation without having to understand the network details.
You can use logical networks to designate networks with different purposes, to create traffic isolation, and to provision networks for different types of SLAs. For example, for a tiered application, you can group IP subnets and VLANs that are used for the front-end web tier to define the FRONTEND logical network. You can group IP subnets and VLANs that are used for back-end servers (such as application and database servers) to define the BACKEND logical network. When self-service administrators model the tiered application as a service, by referring to the name associated with the logical network, they can easily pick the logical network that VMs in each tier of the service should connect to.
To deploy VMs and services, you must have at least one logical network. To make a logical network available to a host, you must associate the logical network with a physical network adapter on the host. You create this association for each network adapter.
By default, when you add a Hyper-V host to System Center Virtual Machine Manager management, it automatically creates logical networks that match the first DNS suffix label of the connection-specific DNS suffix on each host network adapter. You’ll notice that the first step in this configuration disables this default functionality to ensure that you define all of the logical networks yourself.
Network sites
When you create a logical network, you can create one or more associated network sites. A network site associates one or more subnet and VLAN and pairs of subnets and VLANs with a logical network. You can define the host groups to which the network site is available. For example, if you have a Seattle host group and a New York host group and you want to make the BACKEND logical network available to each, you can create two network sites for the BACKEND logical network. You can scope one network site to the Seattle host group (and any desired child host groups), and you can scope the other network site to the New York host group (and any desired child host groups), adding the appropriate subnets and VLANs for each location, as shown in Figure 3-2.
FIGURE 3-2 Logical networks and network sites