Hi there,
I got a bit of a stupid problem with a 2 node Server 2012 Hyper-V failover cluster.
2 DELL servers running Server 2012 (Release 1)
iDrac Enterprise system management controller installed in each machine for remote management
iDrac set to report to the OS as virtual USB network controller for communication OS < - > iDrac
The virtual USB NIC is needed as bridge between the iDrac and the service running in Windows that reports information back to the iDrac. As you can imagine the virtual USB NIC gets detected in Windows just like any other NIC. The virtual USB NIC is not part of an actual network - no communication is possible over this device at all, except to the iDrac controller inside the machine. But to Windows the virtual USB NIC looks just like a standard network card. One exception: it is impossible to assign a static address to the USB NIC from within Windows. The address gets configured in the configuration menu of the iDrac controller and then assigned by DHCP. Any attempt to set the address in Windows to static failed so far: the settings got overwritten on next reboot.
Problem: Server 2012 seems to absolutely want to include these virtual NICs as cluster networks. If you leave the default static IP enabled they are on the same IP subnet but no communication is possible (as mentioned above) and you get a cluster validation error as a result. So I just gave them one address in two separate bogus IPv4 subnets each and the validation passes. Unfortunately they are still added as cluster network automatically despite not sharing any subnet. I manually disabled cluster communications on the networks in Failover Cluster Manager and renamed them to friendly names. Problem is: the settings will not stick. The networks will be made cluster enabled networks again and lose their assigned name randomly after a reboot (not always though). This is presumably because of the DHCP assigned address, but I'm not sure.
Question: Can I remove the USB NICs from the process that automatically adds them as cluster network? Or did I do something wrong in the first place?