Hyper-V MAC Addressing

When you create a Virtual Machine on a Hyper-V Host, the MAC address is assigned to the each virtual network adapter automatically by the Virtual Machine Management Service running as a VMMS.exe in Task Manager.

hyper-v_mac_addressing1

Hyper-V uses the below mechanism to generate the MAC address for a virtual network adapter:

  1. First three octets are reserved for use by the Hyper-V which is 00-15-5D.
  2. Next two octets are generated from the last two octets of the Hyper-V Server’s IP Address.
  3. The last two octets are generated from the range 0x0-0xFF.

A Windows 8.1 Hyper-V Screenshot of Dynamic MAC Address

hyper-v_mac_addressing

And the range Screenshot on the virtual switch follows:

hyper-v_mac_addressing2

If virtual machines have already been created, then you have two options to change the MAC address.

1) Modify the MAC address assignment to static and assign a static MAC address to the virtual network adapter.

2) Remove and re add the virtual network adapter in the virtual machine and a new dynamic MAC address from the pool will be assigned.

The Maximum & the Minimum MAC addresses can be found in the following registry path:

HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Virtualization

Screenshot follows:

hyper-v_mac_addressing3

I would not advise you to modify these unless you know what you are doing. The only problem you will have is mac address conflict, just like the IP address conflict J

More info on a s Scenario: Manage the network configuration of virtual machines: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn425042.aspx