Backplane and Bandwidth

B

BBrietzke

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Jul 24, 2025
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I recently inherited three older class servers to setup as a development cluster. We not only want to have an environment where we can test our software but also test Proxmox to see if it will fit our needs.

Proxmox installs, VMs work and migrate without a problem; boss suitably impressed.

The servers have two NICs in them. One of the NICs on each server is hooked to our main switch cluster so that we can access the VMs and that works. I would like the second NICs on each of the machines to connect to a private network ( backplane? ) so that they can migrate machines and have VM to VM connections without interfering with our main switch network.

I have the physical connections made, but how can I tell Proxmox how to direct the traffic to the correct networks for the appropriate activity? Is there a way to double-check that the correct traffic is going across the correct network without using something like WireShark?

Thank you!
 
Hey,

you can configure which network is used for migrations in the datacenter options[1]. For VM traffic you'd create a new bridge and have the second NIC as its slave, then just attach this bridge to VMs as a network device, if done on all the nodes, all VMs connected to this seconds bridge will only communicate over the second NIC. The PVE host doesn't necessarily need an IP on this network.

[1] https://pve.proxmox.com/pve-docs/pve-admin-guide.html#_options
 
Hi,

you mentioned that the nodes are utilized as development cluster.
Before you roll a setup into production, you should consider to dig a little bit deeper into the network configuration wiki - Network ,
to ensure a stable the corosync replication otherwise you will experience several stability issues. https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Cluster_Manager

without using something like WireShark
Click to expand...
you can utilize tcpdump, similar tool for the command line

Code: 
apt install tcpdump

# monitoring on a specific interface
tcpdump -i <interface_name>

There are more fine grained filter available, too

BR, Lucas
 
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