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October 28, 2009 12:00 AM

Q. Can I monitor the network traffic of a Hyper-V virtual machine (VM) from the host?

Windows IT Pro
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A. Hyper-V is a secure platform and there's no way to simply "mirror" the virtual network switch of a Hyper-V VM from the Hyper-V host using Hyper-V functionality. In addition, Hyper-V virtual switches act like per-port switches, which means each virtual network connected to the virtual switch is isolated from each other machine. This behavior will stop a network monitor running on any virtual NIC connected to the switch from capturing traffic via promiscuous mode (which means a network card receives all traffic traversing the network, not just traffic broadcast or for the network cards own address). At this time, there's no way to monitor or mirror the virtual network device of a Hyper-V VM from the Hyper-V host.

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Check out hundreds more useful Q&As like this in John Savill's FAQ for Windows. Also, watch instructional videos made by John at ITTV.net.

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Comments
  • Yagun
    2 years ago
    Sep 12, 2010

    Actually there is a way to monitor the a Hyper-V VM from the Hyper-V host. For example Hyper-V Bandwidth Meter from http://www.hoststools.com allows to do that.

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