From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Message-ID: <438F2EB7.40502@candelatech.com> Date: Thu, 01 Dec 2005 09:11:19 -0800 From: Ben Greear MIME-Version: 1.0 Subject: Re: [Bridge] Multiple "br" interfaces for a single bridge ? References: In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit List-Id: Linux Ethernet Bridging List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , To: Mark Zipp Cc: bridge@osdl.org Mark Zipp wrote: > Hi, > > We've been recently trying to use VRRP > (https://sourceforge.net/projects/vrrpd/) to provide redundancy for a > couple of servers. What we wanted to do was to have both servers be > VRRP backups for the other. For example : > > Server A - eth0 > VRRP Master IP - 10.0.0.1 > VRRP Backup IP - 10.0.0.2 > > Server B - eth0 > VRRP Master IP - 10.0.0.2 > VRRP Bcakup IP - 10.0.0.1 > > We'd then put two A records in DNS for the single hostname, and then > rely DNS round robin to perform basic load balancing between the > servers. If one of the servers fails, then the other would then take > over both of the VRRP Master IP addresses. This wouldn't be a perfect > fail over as any existing TCP sessions would die, however it is enough > availability for our requirements. > > One problem we have is that, due to the way VRRP has to interact with > kernel ARP, the vrrpd software changes the assigned MAC addresses on > the interfaces it has been configured to use. Since the above scenario > would have two VRRP groups, resulting in two different MAC addresses, > we can't run two instances of VRRP as above using the same ethernet > interface. > > One idea we had was to create a bridge on each server, add eth0 and > then a couple of dummy interfaces into the bridge, and then have each > VRRP instance use the a separate dummy interfaces. This would then > allow the dummy interfaces to have their MAC address changed, and > would then allow us to run multiple instances of VRRP on the hosts. > > Unfortunately when we tried this, we found that because the dummy > interfaces become "pure" layer 2 interfaces when they are added to a > bridge, we can't refer to them with VRRP, as they won't talk IP - only > the bridge "brX" interface for a bridge will. Of course, there is only > one of them for a bridge, so again we're limited to one VRRP instance > on the server. Although we didn't expect it to work, we did try > creating two bridges and assigning the single eth0 interface to both > them. That didn't work. > > Is there a way to somehow create multiple, separate IP interfaces for > a single bridge ? > > The alternative way we were able to get something to work was to use > VLAN trunk interfaces, as they're IP capable, and are considered > separate interfaces by VRRP. The drawback was that we'd then have to > run VLAN trunks into the servers, and also have to have the VRRP > instances running on different IP subnets. That's certainly an option, > it was just a bit too complex for what we want to achieve. > > If anybody has any suggestions as to how else we might achieve this, > I'm all ears. You could try the MAC-VLAN feature in my consolidated patch. MAC-VLANs give you a virtual interface that has a particular MAC, and packets with that MAC (or broadcast) are received by it. It's a real network device, like 802.1Q VLANs, so it will probably work with your VRRP. My patch is here..there is more than just MAC-VLANs in there, by the way: http://www.candelatech.com/oss/candela_2.6.13.patch You'll also need the macvlan_config tool from the VLAN page: http://www.candelatech.com/~greear/vlan.html > > Thanks, > Mark. > > P.S., please CC me as I'm not subscribed to the list. > > _______________________________________________ > Bridge mailing list > Bridge@lists.osdl.org > https://lists.osdl.org/mailman/listinfo/bridge > -- Ben Greear Candela Technologies Inc http://www.candelatech.com