KVM Network-Setup Best-Practices

[hk@]

Hi
what we thought was smart seems not to be so smart after all - we did create vmbr's for each KVM-client on the proxmox-host - added IPs to the vmbr-interfaces and got a smart and easy routed setup where no customer can harm the virtual network of any other customer and yet even connect VMs of one customer with each other - but - surprise we ran into a problem:
If we add another vmbr and do simply run "/etc/init.d/network restart" vmtab-interfaces formerly connected to the vmbr are disconnected - but on the other hand rebooting to create a new vmbr is no way for a production-server, nor rebooting all KVM-clients on this host is an option.

question is - how can we add/delete vmbr's on the fly without rebooting and without disconncting virtual-machines from their networkbridge?

and wish is - please advise to some best-practice-setups for either hosting-environments as well as private environments and if possible - please keep in mind both - openvz and kvm.

kindest regards
hk

 

[dietmar]

question is - how can we add/delete vmbr's on the fly without rebooting and without disconncting virtual-machines from their networkbridge?

simply use 'ifup <dev>' to activate a new bridge.

and wish is - please advise to some best-practice-setups for either hosting-environments as well as private environments and if possible - please keep in mind both - openvz and kvm.

We need some kind of routed setup for KVM in future (without a bridge). That also involves a firewall in most cases (at least a firewall is useful in such environment). We plan to add that after the 2.0 release.