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Configure traffic mirroring with a Hyper-V vSwitch

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This article is one in a series of articles describing the deployment path for OT monitoring with Microsoft Defender for IoT.

Diagram of a progress bar with Network level deployment highlighted.

This article describes how to use Promiscuous mode in a Hyper-V Vswitch environment as a workaround for configuring traffic mirroring, similar to a SPAN port. A SPAN port on your switch mirrors local traffic from interfaces on the switch to a different interface on the same switch.

For more information, see Traffic mirroring with virtual switches.

Prerequisites

Before you start:

  • Make sure that you understand your plan for network monitoring with Defender for IoT, and the SPAN ports you want to configure.

    For more information, see Traffic mirroring methods for OT monitoring.

  • Ensure that there's no instance of a virtual appliance running.

  • Make sure that you've enabled Ensure SPAN on your virtual switch's data port, and not the management port.

  • Ensure that the data port SPAN configuration isn't configured with an IP address.

Create new Hyper-V virtual switch to relay the mirrored traffic into the VM

Create a new virtual switch with PowerShell

New-VMSwitch -Name vSwitch_Span -NetAdapterName Ethernet -AllowManagementOS:$true

Where:

Parameter Description
vSwitch_Span Newly added SPAN virtual switch name
Ethernet Physical adapter name

Learn how to Create and configure a virtual switch with Hyper-V

Create a new virtual switch with Hyper-V Manager

  1. Open the Virtual Switch Manager.

  2. In the Virtual switches list, select New virtual network switch > External as the dedicated spanned network adapter type.

    Screenshot of selecting new virtual network and external before creating the virtual switch.

  3. Select Create Virtual Switch.

  4. In the Connection type area, select External network and ensure that the Allow management operating system to share this network adapter option is selected. For example:

    Screenshot of the External network option.

  5. Select OK.

Attach a SPAN Virtual Interface to the virtual switch

Use Windows PowerShell or Hyper-V Manager to attach a SPAN virtual interface to the virtual switch you created earlier.

If you use PowerShell, define the name of the newly added adapter hardware as Monitor. If you use Hyper-V Manager, the name of the newly added adapter hardware is set to Network Adapter.

Attach a SPAN virtual interface to the virtual switch with PowerShell

  1. Select the newly added SPAN virtual switch you created earlier, and run the following command to add a new network adapter:

    ADD-VMNetworkAdapter -VMName VK-C1000V-LongRunning-650 -Name Monitor -SwitchName vSwitch_Span

  2. Enable port mirroring for the selected interface as the span destination with the following command:

    Get-VMNetworkAdapter -VMName VK-C1000V-LongRunning-650 | ? Name -eq Monitor | Set-VMNetworkAdapter -PortMirroring Destination

    Where:

    Parameter Description
    VK-C1000V-LongRunning-650 CPPM VA name
    vSwitch_Span Newly added SPAN virtual switch name
    Monitor Newly added adapter name

  3. When you're done, select OK.

Attach a SPAN virtual interface to the virtual switch with Hyper-V Manager

  1. Under the Hyper-V Manager's Hardware list, select Network Adapter.

  2. In the Virtual switch field, select vSwitch_Span.

    Screenshot of selecting the following options on the virtual switch screen.

  3. In the Hardware list, under the Network Adapter drop-down list, select Advanced Features. Under the Port Mirroring section, select Destination as the mirroring mode for the new virtual interface.

    Screenshot of the selections needed to configure mirroring mode.

  4. Select OK.

Turn on Microsoft NDIS capture extensions with PowerShell

Turn on support for Microsoft NDIS Capture Extensions for the virtual switch you created earlier.

To enable Microsoft NDIS capture extensions for your new virtual switch:

Enable-VMSwitchExtension -VMSwitchName vSwitch_Span -Name "Microsoft NDIS Capture"

Turn on Microsoft NDIS capture extensions with Hyper-V Manager

Turn on support for Microsoft NDIS Capture Extensions for the virtual switch you created earlier.

To enable Microsoft NDIS capture extensions for your new virtual switch:

  1. Open the Virtual Switch Manager on the Hyper-V host.

  2. In the Virtual Switches list, expand the virtual switch name vSwitch_Span and select Extensions.

  3. In the Switch Extensions field, select Microsoft NDIS Capture.

    Screenshot of enabling the Microsoft NDIS by selecting it from the switch extensions menu.

  4. Select OK.

Configure the switch's mirroring mode

Configure the mirroring mode on the virtual switch you created earlier so that the external port is defined as the mirroring source. This includes configuring the Hyper-V virtual switch (vSwitch_Span) to forward any traffic that comes to the external source port to a virtual network adapter configured as the destination.

To set the virtual switch's external port as the source mirror mode, run:

$ExtPortFeature=Get-VMSystemSwitchExtensionPortFeature -FeatureName "Ethernet Switch Port Security Settings"
$ExtPortFeature.SettingData.MonitorMode=2
Add-VMSwitchExtensionPortFeature -ExternalPort -SwitchName vSwitch_Span -VMSwitchExtensionFeature $ExtPortFeature

Where:

Parameter Description
vSwitch_Span Name of the virtual switch you created earlier
MonitorMode=2 Source
MonitorMode=1 Destination
MonitorMode=0 None

To verify the monitoring mode status, run:

Get-VMSwitchExtensionPortFeature -FeatureName "Ethernet Switch Port Security Settings" -SwitchName vSwitch_Span -ExternalPort | select -ExpandProperty SettingData
Parameter Description
vSwitch_Span Newly added SPAN virtual switch name

Configure VLAN settings for the Monitor adapter (if needed)

If the Hyper-V server is located in a different VLAN than the VLAN from which the mirrored traffic originates, set the Monitor adapter to accept traffic from the mirrored VLANs.

Use this PowerShell command to enable the Monitor adapter to accept the monitored traffic from different VLANs:

Set-VMNetworkAdapterVlan -VMName VK-C1000V-LongRunning-650 -VMNetworkAdapterName Monitor -Trunk -AllowedVlanIdList 1010-1020 -NativeVlanId 10

Where:

Parameter Description
VK-C1000V-LongRunning-650 CPPM VA name
1010-1020 VLAN range from which IoT traffic is mirrored
10 Native VLAN ID of the environment

Learn more about the Set-VMNetworkAdapterVlan PowerShell cmdlet.

Validate traffic mirroring

After configuring traffic mirroring, make an attempt to receive a sample of recorded traffic (PCAP file) from the switch SPAN or mirror port.

A sample PCAP file will help you:

  • Validate the switch configuration
  • Confirm that the traffic going through your switch is relevant for monitoring
  • Identify the bandwidth and an estimated number of devices detected by the switch

  1. Use a network protocol analyzer application, such as Wireshark, to record a sample PCAP file for a few minutes. For example, connect a laptop to a port where you've configured traffic monitoring.

  2. Check that Unicast packets are present in the recording traffic. Unicast traffic is traffic sent from address to another.

    If most of the traffic is ARP messages, your traffic mirroring configuration isn't correct.

  3. Verify that your OT protocols are present in the analyzed traffic.

    For example:

    Screenshot of Wireshark validation.

Next steps

« Onboard OT sensors to Defender for IoT

Provision OT sensors for cloud management »