A New Virtual Desktop could not be created. Verify that all Hyper-V Servers have the correct network configuration…

Hello Folks,

The new BYOD era is expanding number of devices every day, Operating Systems, and applications as well as the constant expectation that we all should be able to access vital information from anywhere anytime.

But… how about accessing the Remote Applications from other platforms??? You can get the Microsoft Remote Desktop App free for each platform below:

Windows Server 2012 R2 Remote Desktop Sessions and Virtual Desktop Infrastructure, users can connect to their Personal or Pooled collection of Virtual Machines, RD sessions, and RemoteApp programs within a single sign-on web based client or Remote Desktop App client:

And with Server Manager you have a nice overview of all the RDS components in a single pane of glass…

More information about Remote Desktop Services Overview can be found here.

Well during the creation of my Pooled VDI collection, the Virtual Desktops failed with the following provisioning error:

As you can see the virtual desktop could not be created from the virtual desktop template.

First thing first you might think that the VM Template where the Pooled VDI is created from could be misconfigured.

Note: You cannot use the new Hyper-V Generation 2 VMs as a VDI template even in Windows Server 2012 R2.

Let’s check first if the VM template is created as Generation 1, and sure enough it is:

Next, if we continue reading the error message, you can see: [Verify that all the Hyper-V Servers in the deployment have the correct network configuration…]. As you know Remote Desktop Virtualization Host (RD Virtualization Host) integrates with Hyper-V role to deploy Pooled or Personal virtual desktop collections.

What a good admin must do in this kind of situation? is to check the Event Log… Smile

So let’s have a look then:

As you can see Warning in the event log.
What this event is saying that you have a MAC conflict: A port on the virtual switch has the same MAC as one of the underlying team members on Team Nic Microsoft Network Adapter Multiplexor Driver.

Let’s sort all the Virtual NICs, Physical NICs and MAC addresses using PowerShell.

PS C:\Get-netadapter | sort macaddress

As you can see we have MAC address conflict!

One note to mention that this host is deployed and managed using Virtual Machine Manager 2012 R2 and we are using Converged Network Fabric.

Now as per Microsoft, this conflict should not cause any issue as long as the team member that has the same MAC as the Virtual NIC remains in the same team, but if that team member is removed from this team and attempt to operate in a standalone mode with the same MAC, then we will have a duplicate MAC address on the network assuming that the Virtual NIC is also in operation state.

More information about How to Set the Static MAC Address Range for Virtual Network Devices in VMM.

I don’t like to see Warnings or Errors in the event log, so to avoid the MAC address conflict, we can change the MAC of the Team (Microsoft Network Adapter Multiplexor). The operation is straightforward, you can jump into the properties of the team interface, then click the Configure button, then select the Advanced tab, MAC Address\Value:
PoolVDI-08

Let’s now try to re-create the VDI Pool again and see how it goes…

Unfortunately we still have the same error Sad smile

What could be the problem then? Thinking smile

The issue is around the network configuration for this VM Template, I remember that I assigned a static IP Address while preparing and updating the template.

I removed the static IP address, Syspreped the image and then I tried to re-create the Pool, but still no hope!!!

I jumped into my VMM Server, and I revised the Hardware Configuration for this VM Template since It was deployed through VMM.

As you can see, the Virtual Machine template is connected to my Logical Network.

Mummm, Thinking smile Do you think that the RD Virtualization Host is smart enough to understand that the VM Template is connected to a Logical Switch instead of a Standard Switch?