Hyper-V Multiple NICs: Static vs. DHCP
I'm preparing to expand my virtual environment and need to revisit my multiple NIC best practice. My server ( I have a few like this) has 2 on-board NICs and then two PCI Quad NIC cards. I use on-board #1 for host interface with static IP; on-board #2 with a static address (not gateway for a separate Hyper-V machine migration network (VLAN), and then the remaining 8 NICs for LAN or DMZ connections for the guest virtual machines. Each guest VM has a static IP. My best practice question is for the 8 NICs on the 2 quad PCI cards. Should I assign a static IP without gateway to each NIC, or leave them for the DHCP server? I've used both methods before with similar results. I like the idea of the static without gateway because it keeps the DHCP address pool cleaner and is easier on DNS (i.e. I don't have 10 entries in the pool list or forward lookup zone showing the same host name), but I also like the ease of just letting DHCP do its thing and then just live with the extra entries. Thoughts?
Cliff Galiher
If you are configuring everything properly and the NICs are for guest VMs then they won't have IP addresses at all, neither DHCP nor static...so it doesn't really matter.
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If you want to your 8 NIC only for Virtual machines then no need to assign any IP addresses of NICs. Just create virtual switch without check mark on 'Allow management operating system to share this network adapter'.