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so I thought I'd give Hyper-V on Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise a try on my Homeserver (yes, it's legit... got it from msdnaa). First thing to throw at it was my firewall which runs IPFire. This distribution currently uses the kernel version 2.6.32.15 and comes with the Hyper-V drivers.

So I enabled them and at first they work just fine but after a few minutes they just fail. There are no packages going in or out anymore until I reboot the VM but sometimes even that won't work so the VM just keeps "Stopping" like forever.

Emulated networking works fine but it slow and uses more CPU. That way my firewall routes slower than when running under virtualbox on an atom N270. My server has an E6750; VM is limited to 25%, but that should still outperform this atom CPU especially since it's never going anywhere near 100% CPU load, so give me a break!

A quick google search led me to people having the same problem (even with other distributions and kernel versions that include those drivers) but no solution yet...

I already found this but I can't quite follow the author on the part where he solved the issue - especially since I need two virtual nics for my firewall distro to work (obviously one internal and one external)

What am I missing here?

luxifer
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  • What server hardware are you using? What's the NIC's chip? Most problems I see related to Hyper-V network issues are poorly written/supported/whatever NIC drivers or hardware. – Chris S Dec 28 '10 at 20:43
  • I'm using plain desktop hardware... a p45 board with integrated realtek nic... using up-to-date vendor drivers or built-in windows drivers doesn't make a difference... unfortunately I don't have another NIC around... on the other hand it would really disappoint me if Hyper-V was SO picky about NICs – luxifer Dec 29 '10 at 09:25
  • I haven't seen any issues with Hyper-V and nics. The only issues I've seen are Hyper-V and processor/motherboards. If you can get the drivers loaded in windows for the nic its going to be fine for hyper-v. Hyper-V presents the same network interface to all of its clients regardless of the hardware its running on. – ErnieTheGeek Dec 29 '10 at 15:31
  • You mentioned that IPFire comes with the hyper-v drivers, have you tried download the latest ICs from microsoft? You can get them from: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=eee39325-898b-4522-9b4c-f4b5b9b64551 – ErnieTheGeek Dec 29 '10 at 16:39
  • Unfortunately I can't use the Microsoft ICs as IPFire is a firewall distribution that comes without the development tools needed to compile the MS ICs – luxifer Dec 29 '10 at 16:42
  • might take a look here http://blogs.technet.com/b/zaid_arafehs_blog/archive/2011/01/08/unstable-connectivity-behaviour-on-hyper-v-guests.aspx – tony roth Jan 09 '11 at 05:32

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I also had a lot of issues with any mainline kernel hv starting with 2.6.33 up to recent 2.6.36.1. It seems that either you are of the lucky ones and can get working Linux VMs or what is more often seen are network losses and crashing storage modules. I hope things improve but at the moment I still have a bad feeling.

I have the certain doubt the hv modules were primarily developed and testest with Kernels from RHEL 5 (not 6) amd SLES 10. I had to switch CentOS 5 to get a stable running Linux.

See the problems that were reported here: http://www.panterlo.com/2010/10/10/ubuntu-10-10-and-hyper-v-r2/#comment-84

Mat
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  • we had so many problems running Linux VMs under Hyper-V (2008 R2) that we just eventually gave up on it as a solution. :( – Jeff Atwood Jan 03 '11 at 08:24
  • me, too... now reading c# book so I can write my own management service around VirtualBox (which works (almost) flawlessly as a hypervisor) – luxifer Jan 04 '11 at 09:59
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see this list and if anything is relevant then apply it, and or if this is not production then download the beta of w2k8r2 sp1, it solves lots of little issues!

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff394763(WS.10).aspx

tony roth
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  • may it be you forgot the link to the list? edit: I'd really like to wait until SP1 is out though. It's just my home server but I want it to run and I don't want to fiddle with it all the time... SP1 is still beta and though it may not introduce new problems for me it still may as well do so... and I may run into troubles when the final comes out... so I'd really like to see the list you mentioned :-) – luxifer Dec 29 '10 at 09:18
  • there's a hotfix that sounds like it should address the issue... just applied it... well for now I can tell that networking didn't just crash in less than a minute :-) hope it stays that way... I'll report back later – luxifer Dec 29 '10 at 15:39
  • Which hotfix was it? – ErnieTheGeek Dec 29 '10 at 15:41
  • KB974909 http://support.microsoft.com/kb/974909/en-us – luxifer Dec 29 '10 at 16:10
  • looks like the hotfix doesn't work... it just happened again :-( if nothing else comes to mind I guess that means I have to put to use that C# book I bought and write a management service for VirtualBox on Windows hosts... anyone want to join? :-) – luxifer Dec 29 '10 at 16:35
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Just installed IPFire with the latest patches on Hyper-V VM (W2K8R2) with the SP1 RC installed on the host. When running a speedtest (speedtest.net) it just crashes within 10-15 seconds - but for a brief moment it reaches 103.7 Mbps! :o)

Ron
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