Hyper-V networking: MAC addresses, adapter names and VLANs

Hyper-V, the hypervisor built into Windows, has PowerShell cmdlets for most of the network settings of a virtual machine. Here are three I use often: finding an adapter’s MAC address, renaming an adapter, and setting VLANs on it.

Get the MAC address of an adapter

Get-VM <VMName> | Get-VMNetworkAdapter | Select Name,MacAddress,IPAddresses

This lists the name, MAC address and IP addresses of every network adapter of the virtual machine.

Rename an adapter

A VM with several adapters is easier to manage when each one has a meaningful name. Select the adapter by its MAC address and rename it:

Get-VM <VMName> | Get-VMNetworkAdapter | ?{$_.MacAddress -eq '<MACAddress>'} | Rename-VMNetworkAdapter -NewName '<NewName>'

Write the MAC address the way Hyper-V shows it in the previous command: twelve hexadecimal characters with no separators, such as 00155D012A0B.

Set VLANs on an adapter

Virtual LANs (VLANs) split a network into separate broadcast domains. To let an adapter carry several VLANs, put it in trunk mode:

Set-VMNetworkAdapterVlan -VMName <VMName> -VMNetworkAdapterName "<AdapterName>" -Trunk -AllowedVlanIdList "<VLANList>" -NativeVlanId <NativeVLAN>

• -Trunk lets the adapter carry traffic from several VLANs.
• -AllowedVlanIdList is the list of VLANs allowed on the adapter, such as "10,20,30-40".
• -NativeVlanId is the VLAN whose traffic is sent untagged.

Reference

• Get-VM
• Get-VMNetworkAdapter
• Rename-VMNetworkAdapter
• Set-VMNetworkAdapterVlan