Windows transparent networks on Hyper-V VMs

Docker Engine General
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1

I have an application that specifically requires a transparent network, and I’m hoping to run it within a Hyper-V virtual machine running Windows Server.

My suspicion is that this is just impossible because a transparent network depends on a vSwitch, which is itself a part of Hyper-V and thus cannot be installed or managed in a Hyper-V VM… However I have been able to successfully create a transparent network on the VM and start a container on that network, which might indicate that it’s a possibility. That container, however, doesn’t appear to actually have network access, so I’m hoping for some insight into what might be going on.

The host is running Windows Server 2022 Standard, and Docker CE 27.3.1. I’m running a container based on mcr.microsoft.com/powershell:7.3-windowsservercore-ltsc2022.

Here’s the output of a network inspect:

[
    {
        "Name": "transparentnet",
        "Id": "7d766e69cd502dc2e5c2ac34c0bfd05ab5fedd3cf03718540b71411007b8062a",
        "Created": "2024-12-23T12:10:36.8909284-08:00",
        "Scope": "local",
        "Driver": "transparent",
        "EnableIPv6": false,
        "IPAM": {
            "Driver": "windows",
            "Options": {},
            "Config": [
                {
                    "Subnet": "10.90.0.0/21",
                    "Gateway": "10.90.0.1"
                }
            ]
        },
        "Internal": false,
        "Attachable": false,
        "Ingress": false,
        "ConfigFrom": {
            "Network": ""
        },
        "ConfigOnly": false,
        "Containers": {
            "216fa2bcc704683f508360c6aafeb493a41e3fac3935ab4051fa7d431ff518c6": {
                "Name": "awesome_cohen",
                "EndpointID": "52d84fdbe89e9704f1d60cfe7fb4899128c76d1531c3996c156ac650ebacec36",
                "MacAddress": "00:15:5d:7f:00:d2",
                "IPv4Address": "10.90.0.124/8",
                "IPv6Address": ""
            }
        },
        "Options": {
            "com.docker.network.windowsshim.hnsid": "2A226343-E4EF-47B6-98B5-DF253D7B0AB8",
            "com.docker.network.windowsshim.interface": "Ethernet",
            "com.docker.network.windowsshim.networkname": "transparentnet"
        },
        "Labels": {}
    }
]

Interestingly, I did not explicitly specify that 10.90.0.124 IP address, so it appears to have picked it up via DHCP… But the IP and MAC are not showing up on our router, so maybe not? The ipconfig and route print output look healthy as well, but I cannot ping the gateway.

Anyhow as stated I suspect this is just impossible, but if anybody has any interesting information or ideas on the matter I’d like to hear them. Thanks!

3

I’m not a Windows user, so I don’t know how transparent network works on Windows, but if you haven’t read that yet, there is a documentation from Microsoft:

and we had another topic about it

4

I read both of those before posting here, they do not answer my question.