Network Sensor for Hyper-V Deployment Guide
You can deploy the Rapid7 Network Sensor (Insight Network Sensor) on a Microsoft Hyper-V virtual machine with a monitoring interface that receives SPAN traffic.
This guide covers the steps to configure the virtual switches and the virtual machine that the network sensor will run on. These steps were tested on Windows Server 2022 and 2025, but should be applicable to other Windows Server versions or to a standalone Hyper-V server.
Your Hyper-V deployment will consist of the following steps:
| Step | Content |
|---|---|
| Configure Virtual Switches for Hyper-V | Create and configure the two virtual switches the network sensor requires: one for management and one for monitoring. Includes enabling the Microsoft NDIS Capture extension and setting the monitoring mode on the monitoring switch. |
| Configure the Network Sensor Virtual Machine in Hyper-V | Create the virtual machine, attach a second network adapter for the monitoring switch, set its mirroring mode to Destination, and install the base operating system and the network sensor. |