Forum Discussion
Hyper-V Default switch IP address range change. Ver 1809 Build 17763.1
This thread is really old and in a few days Windows 10 1909 is being released for the public use.
currently Windows 10 1903 is globally available for both home and businesses. lot of things have improved ever since.
so which Windows 10 build are you using?
I personally use Windows 10 insider fast ring build 18990 (2001).
okay so for you special situation, I would use 2 physical NICs, which is very normal for configurations like yours.
1 physical NIC would provide connection for the Host only (Internet connection + communication with other LAN devices on your real network) and the other physical NIC would be tied to all of your VMs as an (External) virtual network adapter.
this way your VMs would be isolated from the host and other devices on your LAN, as they all have access to the physical NIC 2 only (through an external virtual network adapter).
Another possibility would be to set up 2 virtual network adapters. 1 private (for inter-VM communications) and the other to give VMs Internet access which is again the 2nd physical NIC as an external network adapter).
Thank you for replying; I appreciate it.
I am using Windows 10 Version 1903, build 18362.329.
I'm in no way married to the Default Switch and am perfectly content to create another switch for my purposes. I simply need to meet the conditions described in my previous post.
The second configuration you suggest looks to be exactly what I want, and in fact, it's exactly what's described in the following blog post that mlmathews cited earlier in the thread:
https://www.petri.com/using-nat-virtual-switch-hyper-v
This configuration does in fact function exactly the way I'd like, so I'm happy!
That said, I concur with mlmathews that the Default Switch poses an annoyance now, for one specific reason: when I provision a virtual machine with Vagrant, I'm prompted which switch to use, because I now have more than one, whereas when only one switch exists, Vagrant chooses the only switch automatically and without prompting.
I've tried disabling the Default Switch in the Device Manager (which, of course, also causes it to be disabled in Control Panel\Network and Internet\Network Connections), but Vagrant still sees it as long as it's available in Hyper-V's Virtual Switch Manager.
In any case, I can live with this minor annoyance, as well as the fact that the Virtual Switch, despite it's un-intuitive behavior, may be working exactly as Microsoft intends. Whether or not that behavior is ill-conceived, short-sighted, and completely out of lockstep with that seen in competing products is another discussion in which I have far less interest than "just getting it working". 😉
And if the information offered in https://mikefrobbins.com/2018/11/08/managing-the-hyper-v-default-switch-in-windows-10-version-1709-and-higher-with-powershell/ has not changed substantially since its publication, removing the Default Switch sounds to be more trouble than it's worth.
Thanks again for all the help, everyone!
- Good points
I don't have time to list everything I've noticed, but I'll give you a couple of networking examples.
In VMware both the NAT and host-only networks have a virtual DHCP server that's configurable.
Another example is in VMware a bridged virtual adapter can be set to automatically select a physical adapter to bridge...so if you are developing on a laptop it will automatically switch between wifi and ethernet.
- Could you name some of those missing capabilities that you're talking about?
for me the Only capabilities that Hyper-V is missing is tabbed VM session viewing, when working with multiple VMs at the same time. but that's the nature of it because of RDP and there are programs that have tabbed RDP session feature. - In my case, the only reason I'm trying to use Hyper-V now is that it's required if you want to user Windows containers / Docker Desktop on Windows 10. I'd much prefer to still be using VMware Workstation, but unfortunately VMware and Hyper-V can't co-exist (yet). So I've bitten bullet and moved to Hyper-V. I'm honestly really surprised how far behind Hyper-V is in capabilities and flexibility compared to VMware Workstation given how long Hyper-V has been around.
- I'm wondering, The default switch has only been with us for 2 years now, it's fairly new, so what were the Vagrant users using before Default switch was even introduced?
Hyper-V itself is not new and people have been using it for Years, when it didn't have Default switch, but suddenly 2 years ago Microsoft introduced it for users with no networking experience and then all the professionals decides to use it too.
so yeah I'm wondering why not do the same thing that they were before Default switch was even in Hyper-V. I realize that many of us have differing use-cases; some of us are software developers using Vagrant who want internal IP addresses, some of us are systems admins using Windows Server who want external IP addresses, and some of us are adamant about using the Default Switch whereas some of us don't care what switch we use as long as its IP address doesn't change.
For those who share my specific use-case (i.e., using Vagrant and impartial to the Default Switch), I wrote a comprehensive How-To, which you may find helpful:
https://superuser.com/a/1379582/176764
Hopefully, Vagrant and Microsoft can work together to eliminate all the hoop-jumping!
- Thank you very much, appreciate the kind words,
It's good to know that it's working out for you, unfortunately I don't much experience with Vagrant myself but I think this is a great feedback that you provided about Hyper-V and Vagrant incompatibility over the default switch, I think Microsoft can fix this with Vagrant just like they cooperate with VMWare to make compatible features, I would definitely up vote it if you post it in the uservoice or Feedback Hub.
Thanks again, have a good one!
