Is it possible to create a bridge between multiple physical servers? If so, how do I achieve?

 

This is what I am looking to do with a couple of servers, either A or B. 

 

I want all clients to connect to a switch, then bonded NIC on the first server. All clients connect to Server 1 through the switch. All clients connect to server 2 and 3 through server 1. Server 2 and 3 ideally would share internet connection with Server 1. Only difference between option A and B is in A, servers 2 and 3 connect directly to 1. Server 3 connects to 2, 2 connects to 1. I assume there is no benefit there, and probably more complexity. 

 

Alternatively, It would actually be better for me to remove the switch from the equation. Could I connect a single client to Server 1, instead of the Switch, and then have either Option A or Option B?

 

I tried setting this up with not much luck. But I likely wasn't approaching it in the right way. 

 

UnRAID does not support passing connections through to another server in the manner your diagrams sugges

 

What are you actually trying to achieve?    If we understood better the problem you are actually trying to solve we might be able to give some sensible guidance.   For instance is it a single unified view of all the data regardless of the server it is on, or are you looking at some sort of workload balancing across the servers.

41 minutes ago, itimpi said:

UnRAID does not support passing connections through to another server in the manner your diagrams sugges

 

What are you actually trying to achieve?    If we understood better the problem you are actually trying to solve we might be able to give some sensible guidance.   For instance is it a single unified view of all the data regardless of the server it is on, or are you looking at some sort of workload balancing across the servers.

Now that you mention it, a single unified view of all data is a desired goal, I didn’t know this was possible, but the general idea is upcoming on my list. I’d like to learn  more.

 

The reason behind the initial post is two-fold. I’m out of ports on both 40 and 10GbE Switches, and I need to add a few more servers to my network. Chelsio NiC provides for spider mode, allowing for 4 10GbE connections to a single server. 

 

Secondly, I’ve found that I am able to achieve faster transfer speed when initiated from VM’s. For instance I am able to achieve a 2.5 gigabyte per second transfer from a VM on Server 1 to any of my clients. Whereas initiating a transfer to the same client, from the same Share, from outside of the VM results in less than 5oo megabytes per second. No idea why. But a connection like that for select servers would allow me to create a separate network for machines that require that throughout but not that level of bandwidth.

 

 

I couldn’t find anywhere in documentation if unraid will support direct connection and connection through switch either. I’ve not been able to get that setup either.

 

for instance, dual port NIc connecting to two separate subnets.

 

Port 1 -> 10GbE Switch On Subnet 1 

Port 2 -> Direct attach to client or server on Subnet 2. 

 

I’ve tried with no success. Is that possible too?

 

Its been a while since I did this on plain linux, but I think if you bridged all the interfaces on Server 1, Server 1 would then act like a switch.

Of course, you can only connect Server 3 to Server 1 if you still enough physical ports to use ( and I'm not familiar with 40gb interfaces )

 

Edit: And if you do bridge all the interfaces together, you can't connect Server 1 to the switch with multiple cables, you will be limited to 1, unless bonding is also in place.

Edited May 8, 20197 yr by ken-ji

4 hours ago, Dr. Ew said:

I couldn’t find anywhere in documentation if unraid will support direct connection and connection through switch either. I’ve not been able to get that setup either.

 

for instance, dual port NIc connecting to two separate subnets.

 

Port 1 -> 10GbE Switch On Subnet 1 

Port 2 -> Direct attach to client or server on Subnet 2. 

 

I’ve tried with no success. Is that possible too?

 

You've need to add ip forwarding and routing rules on unraid server and other clients, as the clients on subnet 1/2 would not know to use the dual port server as a router to reach the other subnet. Then unraid server would need ip forwarding enabled (by default when dockers are enabled) to it will pass traffic for the other subnet thru

Cool. Thank you. That’s definitely why I couldn’t get it to work. I’ll give that a go.