networking settings - metric missing and thoughts on dynamic routing and VE migration

hk@

Renowned Member
Feb 10, 2010
248
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Vienna
kapper.net
Hi
here is what we do:
we're running quagga (specifically ospfd) on the proxmox-hardware-node this gives us full dynamic routingtables in case eg. one VE is moved to another proxmox-host (no cluster-membership necessary, IPs can be assigned without any subnet-relationship to the interfaces on the hardware-node) - all this is true for openvz based VEs.

with kvm-based VEs we have things solved for us to assign a specific vmbr-interface to each VE and configure an IP-subnet onto this - the VE can then use this IP configuration to reach towards the internet. The downside here is that we can't assign a relationship of vmbr's to VEs - which would be really nice (hint!) and enable one to roam VEs without any hassle between hosts (without fancy clustering true, and yes it can take a while but most of the time this is quite enough).

Now back to my problem: when we modify the /etc/network/interfaces to include some metric value on vmbr0 (where proxmox deploys itself as default-interface) in order to get this default-gw setting into some sort of last-resort-gateway - proxmox removes this during the next reboot (the metric setting and yes sometimes only) and we're back at having to reconfigure this manually.

Yes, we could set no default-gw and use ospf only, but having some last-resort in case of emergency (quagga may fail too) is a nice thing and we'd simply assign it some metric-value to usually not be used and would be fine here.

Finally - if - proxmox would decide to integrate quagga into its package-system this would be highly appreciated one direct benefit would probably be no more reboots for network-reconfiguration and shiny dynamic routing within a cluster without trouble.
Only - please keep in mind that individual configuration-modifications especially on the routing-engine might be needed - for example we filter the private IPs assigned to nfs-backup-ethernet-interfaces to not poison the public routing-domain in our network.

Basically I think a quick-fix could be some option to tell proxmox to handle a metric value for interfaces too. (please!)

Thoughts and ideasy highly appreciated, we're running several hundred VEs on a bit fewer hardware-nodes (not all proxmox based though, in fact I can't think of a hypervisor we have not running on at least one serversystem here).

Regards
hk
 
Re: networking settings - metric missing and thoughts on dynamic routing and VE migra

Now back to my problem: when we modify the /etc/network/interfaces to include some metric value on vmbr0 (where proxmox deploys itself as default-interface) in order to get this default-gw setting into some sort of last-resort-gateway - proxmox removes this during the next reboot (the metric setting and yes sometimes only) and we're back at having to reconfigure this manually.

Please can you post/send your modification (I need to test why those settings gets removed)

Finally - if - proxmox would decide to integrate quagga into its package-system this would be highly appreciated one direct benefit would probably be no more reboots for network-reconfiguration and shiny dynamic routing within a cluster without trouble.

Quagga is a standard debian package. So what do you mean by ' integrate quagga into its package-system'?
 
Re: networking settings - metric missing and thoughts on dynamic routing and VE migra

hi
the modification is quite simple:
auto vmbr0
iface vmbr0 inet static
address 10.0.0.1
netmask 255.255.255.0
gateway 10.0.0.254
bridge_ports eth0
bridge_stp off
bridge_fd 0
metric 150

-------------

the problem that arises is probably (after some further investigation) related to us not wanting to boot the server after we add another vmbrX and assign an IP to this vmbrX interface on the HW-node. We simply restart networking (and then have to add the before associated tap devices to the vmbrX bridges as they get cleared and never restored), so I guess it's something to do with us, though I would argue that rebooting a server whenever you add a new software switch for virtual networking (which the vmbrX are used for essentially) is not a good thing.

Regarding quagga - well - if you would use the zebra-daemon to eg. assign IPs to interfaces and import routing-information this would be nice and being able to integrate the fancy gui of proxmox with dynamic routing - this is what I meant by saying integrate it into your package.

regards
hk
 
Re: networking settings - metric missing and thoughts on dynamic routing and VE migra

Regarding quagga - well - if you would use the zebra-daemon to eg. assign IPs to interfaces and import routing-information this would be nice and being able to integrate the fancy gui of proxmox with dynamic routing - this is what I meant by saying integrate it into your package.

OK. I also think about a new KVM network mode (routed) in V2.0 - similar to OpenVZ routed network setup. Would that help?