Install and Configure VMM Network Builder #SCVMM #SysCtr #Cloud #HyperV

Hello Folks,

Good News! The System Center VMM Team just announced a new UI add-in tool to help customer on creating virtual network in Virtual Machine Manager.

If you are using Virtual Machine Manager in your environment and of course you should if you have more than 3 Hyper-V hosts to manage, then you examine the network fabric was the hardest part to configure .

But…

The interns Program Managers on the System Center VMM team Mr. Anjay Ajodha and Mr. Matt McGlynn spent their summer analyzing the customer pain points regarding networking in VMM and have developed a small tool that should help ease the frustration with setting up VLAN-isolated networks in VMM. To help you get started quickly with networking in VMM and to simplify the process of creating new networks, they have created a new UI add-in in VMM home taskbar:

The entire basic networking setup can be created with this tool that can either be applied to hosts directly or used as a generic networking object base to be modified for customization to your configuration. VMM Network Builder compresses the steps required to build a logical switch. This tool will create networks that utilize VLAN isolation however it is not purposed for creating NVGRE networking configurations!

Let’s jump first into the installation of VMM Network Builder:

When the installation is done, you end up with NetworkBuilder.zip

Next, we need to import the Add-in, open VMM console and browse to Settings workplace and click on Import Console Add-in.

After the import is completed you can see an extra Icon in the title home bar “Build a Network“.

Let’s create and configure a basic VLAN-isolated network, click on “Build a Network“ and follow the wizard.

The Network Builder will connect to your VMM Server.

The first question is, do you to Create a Management Network?

The second option, do you have a separate Management NIC or all traffic going into the same physical NIC/Team?

In my environment, I am using Converged Network Fabric for (Management, Live Migration, Cluster, Virtual Machines, etc…), therefore I will select No.

Next you want to define the Management Network subnet.

Next step is to define a logical network name:

Now you want to define the Virtual Networks (VLAN ID and IP Pools).

Here a nice diagram showing the network configuration that will be created.

You can select “I would like to create a script to apply this logical switch to hosts”.

Here is the final summary before you create the VLAN-isolated network.

You can save the Script for future use as well.

As you noticed many different options are available in this tool, I recommend to try it and see how it works in your environment.

You can download the VMM Network Builder tool from here.

Enjoy your day!

Cheers,
/Charbel