Etherchannel VLAN

A

apollumi

New Member
May 16, 2025
7
1
3
I'm coming from years spent with VMWare and I'm trying to understand ProxMox's equivalent network setup. After many hours my reading and watching videos of how to do the equivalent of this in ProxMox I think I should bond the four ports on my Intel NIC card with LACP (and hashing algorithm) and make a VLAN aware bridge and put the bond in it. Then when I create my virtual machine I manually type in the VLAN I want to use. Is this correct? "VM --> Bond --> Bridge" with manually typing in the VLAN tag?

I was hoping for something like VMWare's port groups where I could just select a network vlan tag from a dropdown when I create the virtual machine. I have 32 vlans and it's easy to select thier port group name in VMWare and know what it is, such as 192-server 200-server 208-server or something like 8-user 16-user 72-wireless. I'm expecting a drop down and select my vlan.

Example images below. How do I make labeled drop down vlan selections for my virtual machines? Is it possible?


VMWare - Select port group/vlan

1747414278294.png

ProxMox - no vlan selection

1747414342551.png
 
I have read the document through a couple times. Please keep in mind that from years of using linux I have been able to stay pretty clueless about anything more complicated than manually jacking around with an interface via /etc/network/interfaces. Never did bridges or bonds (Linux nomenclature) and have spent the most of my time in Cisco and VMWare. Aside from knowing how something works it's all about the syntax and how that syntax works to achieve similar results on a given platform.

My server has an Intel four port card which will be used for user access. A two port intel card is going to be used for backups, vmotion (equivalent) etc, and a single nic for management. What I'm currently trying to wrap my brain around is tagging "traffic" for different vlans via the "Bridge" dropdown on the VM Network Device and not by adding a vlan tag to the VM itself.

I'm going to ask a few questions here. Please ELI5 for me.

Can you only select bridges (ie switch) for the workstations?

With the assumption of the above being true then in the example provided earlier (my proxmox network selection pic) I would need an interface along the lines of vmbr1v8 (a bridge) to assign to my VM to get it into VLAN 8 without tagging it on the Network Device settings via the "VLAN Tag:" field?

Would the configuration below add a vlan 8 tag to my frame and if not what would be the right way?



Example user access config snippet for Intel 4 port card:
==============================

iface eno1 inet manual

iface eno2 inet manual

iface eno3 inet manual

iface eno4 inet manual

auto bond0
iface bond0 inet manual
bond-slaves eno1 eno2 eno3 eno4
bond-miimon 100
bond-mode 802.3ad
bond-xmit-hash-policy layer2+3

iface bond0.8 inet manual

auto vmbr0
iface vmbr0 inet manual
bridge-ports bond0
bridge-stp off
bridge-fd 0

auto vmbr0v8
iface vmbr0v8 inet manual
bridge-ports bond0.8
bridge-stp off
bridge-fd 0

==============================



I want people to be able to select a named network (Linux bridge) such as "8-User" or "224-Server" from the bridge dropdown for the VM. The thought of having a technician look up a VLAN chart and plug it into a VM is worrying. I need 32 vlans for my network setups also.

I don't want to lug this thing over to the switch until I'm fairly sure I won't have to lug it back after forty minutes of trying to guess what else might work. I've spent three glorious days plugging away at this off and on and i'm still not sure if what I want to do will work.
 
Markku said:
https://pve.proxmox.com/pve-docs/chapter-pvesdn.html

Create a VLAN zone for your vmbr0, and then create VNets for the tagged VLANs.
Click to expand...

I'll go and read this to see if I can get better insight into what is going on.


Edit:

Hmmm. I watched a video on this. First I've know this was possible. I might just back up and go through some tutorials on the whole of Proxmox since I can't take my VMWare experience and bludgeon my way through making Proxmox work.
 
Last edited:
Yeah, so basically:
  • On the PVE node, you create a VLAN-aware Linux bridge (like vmbr0), setting bridge ports = bond0
  • On the Datacenter level, you create an SDN zone of type VLAN, using the vmbr0 bridge above
  • Still on the Datacenter level, you create the VNets (like "VLAN 10", "VLAN 20", etc), using the zone above, with appropriate VLAN tags
  • You apply the config on the SDN "main" level, it is applied to all your nodes in the cluster.
Now you have the VLANs (the VNets you defined) in the dropdown menus for use in the VM NICs, and they will use the physical NICs of the vmbr0 bridge.
 
Markku said:
Yeah, so basically:
  • On the PVE node, you create a VLAN-aware Linux bridge (like vmbr0), setting bridge ports = bond0
  • On the Datacenter level, you create an SDN zone of type VLAN, using the vmbr0 bridge above
  • Still on the Datacenter level, you create the VNets (like "VLAN 10", "VLAN 20", etc), using the zone above, with appropriate VLAN tags
  • You apply the config on the SDN "main" level, it is applied to all your nodes in the cluster.
Now you have the VLANs (the VNets you defined) in the dropdown menus for use in the VM NICs, and they will use the physical NICs of the vmbr0 bridge.
Click to expand...

Thank you this reply was very helpful. I did a small test of this and was able to choose it from the dropdown.

Admittedly I need to back up and start from scratch with Proxmox which I am currently doing. I need a higher level view before I start digging in the mud.
 
Markku said:
Yeah, so basically:
  • On the PVE node, you create a VLAN-aware Linux bridge (like vmbr0), setting bridge ports = bond0
  • On the Datacenter level, you create an SDN zone of type VLAN, using the vmbr0 bridge above
  • Still on the Datacenter level, you create the VNets (like "VLAN 10", "VLAN 20", etc), using the zone above, with appropriate VLAN tags
  • You apply the config on the SDN "main" level, it is applied to all your nodes in the cluster.
Now you have the VLANs (the VNets you defined) in the dropdown menus for use in the VM NICs, and they will use the physical NICs of the vmbr0 bridge.
Click to expand...

I just wanted to follow up and say this has been working for a while now. Had a hell of a time with LACP which ended up being my fault because I had my switch etherchannel mode set to "on" for use with VMWare. After I discovered my error about two hours into saying "What the fuck is going on here" I slapped my forehead hard and my head elongated by another 1/8 of an inch.

I thought some special magic (waves hands around sporatically) was going on in Proxmox until I saw all of the sub-interfaces on the bridge I was using. I was like "Oh, now I get it". Doh!

I have 32 vlans and having them all tagged with a label really helped me keep track of things in vmware. Now I have this in Proxmox. Thank you.
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: Markku
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top Bottom