How to Create a Native Port Profile for Uplinks in System Center 2012 SP1

1. Open the Fabric workspace.

2. On the Home tab, in the Show group, click Fabric Resources.

3. In the Fabric pane, expand Networking, and then click Native Port Profiles.

4. On the Home tab, in the Create group, click Create, and then click Native Port Profile.

   The Create Native Port Profile Wizard opens.

5. On the General page, enter a name and optional description for the port profile and then select Uplink port profile. If you plan to enable teaming in the logical switch that includes this uplink port profile, select options for load balancing and teaming, or use the default options. Note that if you do not enable teaming in the logical switch, these options will have no effect.

   Note
   For more information about the options in the list that follows, see NIC Teaming Overview.

   The options for load balancing and teaming are as follows:

   Load-balancing algorithm: the algorithm that the team uses to distribute network traffic between the network adapters. The following options are available:

   • HyperVPort: Distributes network traffic based on the Hyper-V switch port identifier of the source virtual machine. This is the default algorithm.
     
     
   • TransportPorts: Uses the source and destination TCP ports and the IP addresses to create a hash and then assigns the packets that have that hash value to one of the available network adapters.
     
     
   • IPAddresses: Uses the source and destination IP addresses to create a hash and then assigns the packets that have that hash value to one of the available network adapters.
     
     
   • MacAddresses: Uses the source and destination MAC addresses to create a hash and then assigns the packets that have that hash value to one of the available network adapters.
     
     

   Teaming mode: the mode of the NIC teaming. The following options are available:

   • SwitchIndependent: Specifies that a network switch configuration is not needed for the NIC team. Because the network switch is not configured to know about the interface teaming, the team interfaces can be connected to different switches. This is the default mode.
     
     
   • Lacp: Uses the Link Aggregation Control Protocol (LACP) from IEEE 802.1ax (also known as IEEE 802.3ad) to dynamically identify links that are connected between the host and a given switch.
     
     
   • Static: Requires configuration on both the switch and the host to identify which links form the team.
     
     

   After you have completed all settings, click Next.

6. On the Network configuration page, do the following:

   • Select one or more network sites for this uplink port profile to support.
     
     
   • If you want to enable network virtualization (which allows you to deploy multiple VM networks on the same physical network), select the Enable Windows Network Virtualization check box.
     
     

     Note
     The Enable Windows Network Virtualization setting requires a logical network on which you have selected Allow new VM networks created on this logical network to use network virtualization.

   • After you have completed all settings, click Next.
     
     

7. On the Summary page, review and confirm the settings, and then click Finish.

After you create an uplink port profile, the next step is to add it to a logical switch, which places it in a list of profiles that are available through that logical switch. When you apply the logical switch to a network adapter in a host, the uplink port profile is available in the list of profiles, but it is not applied to that network adapter until you select it from the list. This helps you to create consistency in the configurations of network adapters across multiple hosts, but also enables you to configure each network adapter according to your specific requirements.

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