Best Configuration for Dual Lan and VM's

[msteger]

My motherboard has 2 Network ports on board.   I use to have them setup as "Bonded" and "Active Backup".   I recently added a Windows 10 VM that I want to use with RDP so I had to remove the bonding and add a bridge so it gets an IP from my router.   That said, is there any way that I can use the two network cards while still being able to address the VM?   I know that I can passthrough one directly to the VM but I found a post that said doing that would slow down the VM's access to the drives on the server.   I am not interested in trying to get 2GB transfers but more interested in multi-tasking (4K streaming, downloading a file, while using the Windows VM for some network intensive activities at the same time).   Thoughts??

[matthope]

You should put your 2 NIC in the balance-alb (6) mode in the network settings and then just bridge your VM. Balance-alb will slightly improve your bandwidth, load balance your traffic and will automatically go on 1 wire if one NIC fail.

Edited September 10, 2017 by matthope

[xthursdayx]

Just wondering, I'm in the same situation as the OP and just set up my 2 NIC in balance-alb (6) mode. Do I need to do anything else to ensure that my docker containers use the new bond0 interface?

[matthope]

21 minutes ago, zandrsn said:

Just wondering, I'm in the same situation as the OP and just set up my 2 NIC in balance-alb (6) mode. Do I need to do anything else to ensure that my docker containers use the new bond0 interface?

no, it should be automatic.

[bonienl]

You can enable both bonding and bridging on the interface. This will allow both VMs and Docker to communicate over the bonded interface.