Until now, the most easy way to give virtual machines LAN connectivity is to use bridges. The standard workflow is to create a bridge first (manually or from Hypervisor Networks module), then log on your hypervisor, add a physical NIC in the bridge. This needs to shut down the network, configure some stuff etc. It’s pretty annoying and as libvirt doesn’t manage adding/removing NICs to/from bridges, most of the time, the Archipel’s Hypervisor Network module is pretty useless.
Well this time is over.
The Linux Kernel supports a new driver named “macvtap” since 2.6.34 and Libvirt supports it since 0.9.4 . Here is the definition:
“Macvtap is a new device driver meant to simplify virtualized bridged networking. It replaces the combination of the tun/tap and bridge drivers with a single module based on the macvlan device driver. A macvtap endpoint is a character device that largely follows the tun/tap ioctl interface and can be used directly by kvm/qemu and other hypervisors that support the tun/tap interface. The endpoint extends an existing network interface, the lower device, and has its own mac address on the same ethernet segment. Typically, this is used to make both the guest and the host show up directly on the switch that the host is connected to.” (source)
We are happy to announce that Archipel now supports this driver. It’s very easy to use. Select a hypervisor, go to the “Networks” tab, then create a network. Name it as you want, select the mode named “Bridge” or “Private”, and select the forward device (eth0 for instance):
The “Bridge” mode will act like a standard bridge. The virtual machines in the network will have a standard LAN access. The “Private” mode is the same, but it won’t be able to communicate to the rest of the VM on the host.
What you need to do on your hypervisor to support this feature is to load the “macvtap” driver
# modprobe macvtap
You also need to be sure the ethX you will use as forward device is not already in a bridge and you must use Libvirt 0.9.4+.
You may also notice there are more fields in the Network Edition Popover. You can now set the Inband / Outband traffic shaping! And last but not, least, we have added a manual XML editor for the networks, just like the Virtual Machine Definition:
All of this should be already available in the master at the time you read this. We hope you will enjoy it!
We will provide companies with professional support soon.