will PVE host act as L2 switch for VLAN only on host?

[CanadaGuy]

I have a couple of VMs I want to communicate by themselves on a single LAN segment, using a new VLAN ID.

Will the PVE host act like a VLAN aware switch without having any other external networking for this VLAN?

 

[vesalius]

Yes that is a good way to think about a dedicated linux bridge/Vlan. A separate virtual switch with basically unlimited ports. If you don't attach an egress (to either WAN or some other external physical/virtual network) or give the Proxmox host an IP on the bridge/vlan then the guest attached only to that bridge/vlan will be isolated from everything else attached physically and virtually on the proxmox host.

 

[CanadaGuy]

Yes that is a good way to think about a dedicated linux bridge/Vlan. A separate virtual switch with basically unlimited ports. If you don't attach an egress (to either WAN or some other external physical/virtual network) or give the Proxmox host an IP on the bridge/vlan then the guest attached only to that bridge/vlan will be isolated from everything else attached physically and virtually on the proxmox host.

thanks! That's what I assumed but it wasn't clear.

Do the bridges impact throughput much vs doing pass through? This is "just" gigabit, not 10 Gbe or anything.

 

[vesalius]

So gigabit should be no problem and would not be worth any of the passthrough hassle for me. Even 10g I use virtual without issue and good throughput, your CPU starts to come into play there if marginal. Always use paravirtualized Virtio as the network device and not e1000.

 

[CanadaGuy]

So gigabit should be no problem and would not be worth any of the passthrough hassle for me. Even 10g I use virtual without issue and good throughput, your CPU starts to come into play there if marginal. Always use paravirtualized Virtio as the network device and not e1000.

okay, so I just figured out my issue and thought process: you need to specify a bridge, to specify VLAN...but I don't want traffic to exit through an interface/bridge since I want VLAN only...do I just create a bridge with no physical interfaces then, and make it VLAN aware?

 

[spirit]

do I just create a bridge with no physical interfaces then, and make it VLAN aware?

yes