[PVE-User] Network changes require a reboot

[Andrew Niemantsverdriet]

Hi,

Comments inline:

On Thu, Nov 20, 2008 at 1:22 AM, Dietmar Maurer <dietmar at proxmox.com> wrote:
>> I can see why it is important to have the network the same on nodes of
>> a cluster for migration. However is there anyway to get around having
>> to reboot the box when ever a network change is made? I know that it
>> is important to plan ahead and to make sure your network is laid out
>> correctly however as is the nature of most network things they change
>> and evolve as time goes on. So since things change it is impossible to
>> plan for every situation, so things like the network configuration may
>> have to change on a fairly regular basis at least that is what I am
>> running into.
>
> Well, I do not understand why you change your network each day - why?

It is not everyday, but as we move more of our machines and upgrade
our equipment the networking required from our Proxmox cluster gets
more and more complex. I was one of the first downloads of Proxmox 0.9
beta and we started using just one ethernet port and we were happy.
Then we started moving more machines over and it became apparent that
we were saturating our one connection. So we had to add another. Then
a new machine came online we needed VLANs. So that has just kept
snowballing.


>
>> So my question is 3 parts:
>>
>> First is it possible to change the network configuration with a
>> reboot? My servers take about 10min to reboot with all the selfchecks
>> and other stuff that happens during boot-up.
>
> You can use lowlevel network commands. But that requires deep system
> knowledge
> and we can't provide support for that.

Are you talking like ifup and ifdown or something else? Reboots are
bad, and are 10 times worse on a machine that hosts virtuals. It is my
opinion that the more functionality you can give Proxmox with our
requiring a reboot the better the product will be.

>> Second since we are stuck with the network of the master node is there
>> a way propagate changes to the network to all the slaves?
>
> Don't understand that question? You requested exactly the opposite
> previously - you wanted to be able to configure all nodes individually?

I do want to be able to configure individually but if that were
impossible or something that is not going to happen, the next best
thing would be to have the master node configure it all.

>
>> Third are there any plans to abstract the network configuration some?
>
> Well, there are. There is a quite interesting project:
>
> http://sourceforge.net/projects/vde/
>
> http://vde.sourceforge.net/
>
> But there are doubts about performance. But I never tested.

This looks very interesting, I think I may play with this some. Is
Proxmox looking at possibly using this in the future? Or do you have
something else in mind?

Thanks for the response,

-- 
 _
/-\ ndrew Niemantsverdriet
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