Proxmox SOFTWARE DEFINED NETWORKING: Zones, VNets, and VLANs

I made a Proxmox VLANs, Bridges, and Bonds tutorial awhile ago, but since then, the Software Defined Networking module has come out of tech preview! So it's time to take a look at it!

With SDN, you can manage your Proxmox VNets and VNet Zones cluster-wide, and enforce permissions on users who can configure VNets for VM and Container resources. While the SDN has additional functionality for managing DNS, DHCP, and VXLAN, those are still in tech preview so I'm only going to cover the basics today. Let me know if you want a follow-up on those topics!

Proxmox also has a section in their admin manual on SDN which you may find helpful, as it covers all options thoroughly:

Support me on Ko-Fi if you enjoy my content and find it useful:

Feel free to chat about my upcoming projects on Discord!

Timestamps:
00:00 - Introduction
00:30 - Beta Features
01:10 - Upgrade Install
02:07 - Pre-SDN
03:54 - Post-SDN
08:22 - VLAN Zones
09:38 - Permissions
13:23 - QinQ Zones
16:59 - Tech Preview Review

#proxmox #virtualization #homelab #networking

[stephendetomasi]

I'm about 8 minutes in and my head is already spinning, but it looks like a great tutorial. Thanks again for covering this stuff - if only official documentation was this good!

[patrickcasavant-cssmv]

Can't wait for the evpn/vxlan part!! :) Your explanations are awsome!

[falazarte]

You are my go-to channel for learning networking! You deserve more than a coffee

[MarkConstable]

Damn, I was hoping this would include VXLAN and EVPN, but I guess that would deserve a followup video all by itself anyway. My use case is distributing a public /24 across all nodes in a cluster without any help from upstream.

[nevermetme]

You can even give permissions to a single vnet. Though currently not in the DC->Permission panel. But if you select the Zone in the tree view, you can select the vnets and define permissions for it on the panel on the right side.
Great video and nice explanations :)

[APatriot]

Wow you made this easy. Already got it running on the test lab

[edwardvanhazendonk]

SDNs are very nice, may I ask for a little drawing next time you are creating nd explaining this? You talk us through with what you are achieving which is great but a picture upfront might give us just a bit more info and insights. This does not take away that you are great in explaining. Keep up the good work and thanks for sharing.

[snowballeffects]

As always - thorough, informative and easy to digest. Thank you!!

[gasparem]

you are the man! I've been looking for a good video on SDN in proxmox! Thanks a lot for your great videos and tutorials!

[GameOverDave]

thank you for this video, i've been waiting for someone to post on the new SDN features!

[jasonm]

Im happy to see that im not the only one who always chooses those vlan id's in test networks

[marcogenovesi]

I've used the beta plugin for a year, very excited this is now released

[Felix-vehs]

I will definitely be using this with my Proxmox hosts, so much better than dozens of VMBR bridges or remembering VLAN IDs. :)

[drewlarson]

I got way too excited when I say this video come across my feed! Well done apalrd!

[hegharm]

Thanks for the review of SDN Proxmox. The topic that remains unsolved is how to harm access to servers from the Internet, for example, to several web servers on different virtual machines.

[eDoc]

This is great, even if it's just as a way to refer to different VLANs without using numbers. "Port groups" is one of the things that was nicer in ESXi. Now the only thing missing (that I cared about) is the ability to have ISOs stored in a hierarchical layout. I like to keep my data sorted. I guess it would also be nice if VM disk resources also had customizable names. "vm-101-disk-1" in a ZFS status view doesn't mean much but "adserver-bootdisk" does.

[DawidKellerman]

Yes ! I was to lazy to figure it our and I have not watched your video but you already have a like from me!

[autohmae]

BGP announcing MAC-addresses for routing, I ... hadn't expected that one, but it actually sounds pretty great. That might be a great way to scale large installations.

[davelapointe]

Really helpful video. Thanks much. I got unicast VXLAN working and am looking forward to your explanation of BGP EVPN VXLAN, SDN options and IPAM.

[PatrickBulteel]

Wow. Great explanation. Look forward to the rest. I'm about to deploy a Netbox server so I can use the IPAM portion. That's going to be interesting.