Multiple VLAN support

[JimPhreak]

I'm giving serious consideration to dropping VMware ESXi, converting my VMDK's for use in KVM, and making my UnRAID server bare metal again.  However I have a question about VLAN support in KVM because I currently have multiple VM's in different VLANS then my UnRAID server is in.  Now in ESXi I have a different VM network assigned for each VLAN and can just assign the VM network (and thus the corresponding VLAN) to each VM I want to use it with.

 

Is there any way to do something similar in KVM on UnRAID?

[jonp]

I'm giving serious consideration to dropping VMware ESXi, converting my VMDK's for use in KVM, and making my UnRAID server bare metal again.  However I have a question about VLAN support in KVM because I currently have multiple VM's in different VLANS then my UnRAID server is in.  Now in ESXi I have a different VM network assigned for each VLAN and can just assign the VM network (and thus the corresponding VLAN) to each VM I want to use it with.

 

Is there any way to do something similar in KVM on UnRAID?

 

Can I ask your use case?  Is there a particular reason you need your VMs in these different VLANs?  Are you an IT professional with a home lab environment that needs this kind of segmentation?  Just curious on your setup.

[JimPhreak]

I'm giving serious consideration to dropping VMware ESXi, converting my VMDK's for use in KVM, and making my UnRAID server bare metal again.  However I have a question about VLAN support in KVM because I currently have multiple VM's in different VLANS then my UnRAID server is in.  Now in ESXi I have a different VM network assigned for each VLAN and can just assign the VM network (and thus the corresponding VLAN) to each VM I want to use it with.

 

Is there any way to do something similar in KVM on UnRAID?

 

Can I ask your use case?  Is there a particular reason you need your VMs in these different VLANs?  Are you an IT professional with a home lab environment that needs this kind of segmentation?  Just curious on your setup.

 

I am an IT professional who does have a testing environment that I prefer not to have any contact with my main admin network where my servers, networking deviecs, and main PC reside.  Need might be a strong word but I don't think I could live with taking my nicely VLAN'd network and moving back to flat network.

 

I do have some specific reasons for using multiple VLANs though outside of my test environment.  For example I have one VM that is what I called my "private" VM.  It is located in a VLAN that has it's outbound NAT configured (along with some floating rules to prevent any packets from egressing my regular WAN interface) to go out my AirVPN WAN interface.  I use the VM for any internet browsing or downloading (not torrenting, I use DelugeVPN for that) I'd like to keep as private as possible.

 

I also have another VLAN that I use for communications between two sites (my main home and my vacation home where I have my backup UnRAID server located) and thus my backup VM is located on that VLAN.  I'm sure I can reconfigure this but it works well as is.

 

I have other VLANs as well (wireless, etc.) but those are not associated with any VMs.

[jonp]

Sort of what I expected to hear.  It's not to say that we can't or won't add support for this, but its definitely not a short-term item.

[JimPhreak]

Sort of what I expected to hear.  It's not to say that we can't or won't add support for this, but its definitely not a short-term item.

I see.  It's a shame because I was looking forward to moving to a bare metal instance of UnRAID and using VMs but I think I'll have to wait until that vlan support is available.  Maybe I'll just play around with VMs on my backup server for now which has a c2558 in it and can probably support 1-2 VMs.

[jonp]

Sort of what I expected to hear.  It's not to say that we can't or won't add support for this, but its definitely not a short-term item.

I see.  It's a shame because I was looking forward to moving to a bare metal instance of UnRAID and using VMs but I think I'll have to wait until that vlan support is available.  Maybe I'll just play around with VMs on my backup server for now which has a c2558 in it and can probably support 1-2 VMs.

I hear yah, but I think VLAN support may end up being only one of a few features that an IT professional needs. Snapshots and cloning are other big ones for a home lab, which are sooner on the roadmap than VLANs.  Just trying to set good expectations. We will get there eventually...

[JimPhreak]

Sort of what I expected to hear.  It's not to say that we can't or won't add support for this, but its definitely not a short-term item.

I see.  It's a shame because I was looking forward to moving to a bare metal instance of UnRAID and using VMs but I think I'll have to wait until that vlan support is available.  Maybe I'll just play around with VMs on my backup server for now which has a c2558 in it and can probably support 1-2 VMs.

I hear yah, but I think VLAN support may end up being only one of a few features that an IT professional needs. Snapshots and cloning are other big ones for a home lab, which are sooner on the roadmap than VLANs.  Just trying to set good expectations. We will get there eventually...

 

I think VLANs are pretty high on the priority list of all IT professionals who know networking but I understand that IT professionals as a whole isn't your market.  You are more geared towards the home technology enthusiasts.

[burr]

I am in the same situation as you Jim. In my research, i came across this article about how to setup multiple bridges for multiple vlans for KVM.

 

http://blog.davidvassallo.me/2012/05/05/kvm-brctl-in-linux-bringing-vlans-to-the-guests/

 

I have not got a chance to try it on my test server, but it is on my todo list.

 

In theory if it works you can just pick what bridge(vlan) you want to use like we do now with vswitches.

 

The key will be making sure it survives a reboot, which will probably require some GO file modifications.

 

Hope this helps.