Linux KVM: Bridging a Bond on CentOS 6.5
Today we are going to hop back into the KVM fray, and take a look at using CentOS as a hypervisor., and configuring very resilient network connections to support our guests. Of course these instructions should be valid on Red Hat Linux and Oracle Linux as well, though there is a little more to be done around getting access to the repos on those distributions…
Enable Bonding
I am assuming this is a first build for you, so this step might not be applicable, but it won’t hurt anything.
# modprobe –first-time bonding
Configure the Physical Interfaces
In our example we will be using two physical interfaces, eth0 and eth1. Here are the interface configuration files.
# cat /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0<br />
DEVICE=eth0<br />
HWADDR=XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX<br />
ONBOOT=yes<br />
NM_CONTROLLED=no<br />
BOOTPROTO=none<br />
MASTER=bond0<br />
SLAVE=yes<br />
USERCTL=no
# cat /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth1<br />
DEVICE=eth1<br />
HWADDR=XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX<br />
ONBOOT=yes<br />
NM_CONTROLLED=no<br />
BOOTPROTO=none<br />
MASTER=bond0<br />
SLAVE=yes<br />
USERCTL=no
Configure the Bonded Interface
Here we are going to bond the interfaces together, which will increase the resiliency of the interface.
# cat /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-bond0<br />
DEVICE=bond0<br />
ONBOOT=yes<br />
NM_CONTROLLED=no<br />
BOOTPROTO=none<br />
USERCTL=no<br />
BONDING_OPTS="mode=1 miimon=100"<br />
BRIDGE=br0
Configure the Bridge
The final step is to configure the bridge itself, which is what KVM creates the vNIC on to allow for guest network communication.
# cat /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-br0<br />
DEVICE=br0<br />
TYPE=Bridge<br />
ONBOOT=yes<br />
NM_CONTROLLED=no<br />
BOOTPROTO=none<br />
USERCTL=no<br />
IPADDR=192.168.1.10<br />
NETMASK=255.255.255.0<br />
GATEWAY=192.168.1.1<br />
DELAY=0
Service Restart
Finally the easy part. Now one snag I ran into. If you created IP addresses on bond0, then you will have a tough time getting rid of that with a service restart alone. I found it was easier to reboot the box itself.
# service network restart
