Proxmox NETWORKING: VLANs, Bridges, and Bonds!

I'm sure many of you follow me because you use Proxmox. It's been a staple of my content for some time now. So, while working on the next episode of the Ceph series, I thought it would be good to do a separate segment on networking. So, here you have it. The basics of VLANs, Bridges, and Bonds in Proxmox VE. I'm only covering the native Linux versions, not Open VSwitch and VXLAN. I'm sure I'll get around to a video on that topic someday.

So, what are the most important things to know when choosing a network topology for Proxmox (or any virtualization environment)? TRAFFIC! Where is traffic going, and how much of it is going everywhere?
* How much traffic is going to Proxmox itself? This includes the web UI and API (which should be minimal), but also SPICE sessions if you're using SPICE for VDI.
* How much traffic is going from Proxmox to your storage solutions? If you're using NFS / SMB / iSCSI, it could be a lot. Are you keepign your storage network separated, either physically or virtually (VLANs)? Proxmox will need an IP address on any network you use to communicate with storage
* How much traffic is going to your VMs? Do they need to be on specific VLANs?
* Do any VMs do routing or need access to a VLAN trunk port? If so, should they get open access or restricted to certain VLANs? Do you want to expose each VLAN as a separate virtual network interface or trunk them over a single interface?
* Do you require high availability at the network level, i.e. bonded failover? Do you want to use a slower 1G network when your 10G network fails, or just lose connectivity altogether?

Once you can answer these questions, you can proceed to decide how to arrange the physical interfaces you have (or are buying/adding) for the best performace for your use case.

In my test setup, I'm going to demonstrate bonding between identical (two Gigabit) and different (multi-gig + gigabit), and the concepts apply to 10G and faster networking as well.

Link to the blog post on the topic:
https://www.apalrd.net/posts/2022/pve_networking/

Proxmox also has a section in their admin manual on networking which you may find helpful, as it covers all options thoroughly:
https://pve.proxmox.com/pve-docs/pve-admin-guide.html#sysadmin_network_configuration

My Discord Server, where you can carry on the discussion or suggest future topics:
https://discord.gg/xJsaEukAr4

If you find my content useful and would like to support me, feel free to here: https://ko-fi.com/apalrd

Timestamps:
00:00 - Introduction
01:27 - Proxmox Initial Configuration
02:47 - Traffic Type Considerations
03:52 - Bridges and Bridge VLANs
06:04 - Bridge Two VMs Directly
07:27 - Bonds Failover
11:04 - Bonds LAG LACP
14:20 - LAG Speed Limitations
15:48 - Bonding Bonds
18:35 - Cluster Tips
19:22 - VLAN Interfaces
20:41 - VLAN Trunks for VMs
23:03 - Conclusions
24:47 - Outtakes


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#proxmox #networking #linux