Configuring a bridge

In this recipe, we are going to see what a bridge is in Proxmox networking, and how to configure it to create a virtual network of VMs.

Getting ready

A bridge is a virtual implementation of a physical network switch. Virtual machines can be connected to a bridge much in the same way that a physical computer can be connected to a network switch to communicate with other network devices. The naming term for a bridge interface is vmbrX, where X can be an integer number from 0 to maximum of 4096. By default, a new Proxmox installation creates a bridge named vmbr0 in each node.

Each bridge can be attached to a physical network interface of a node or without it. A bridge configured without any physical network interface cannot direct traffic outside the node itself. The traffic can only flow in between whichever VMs are connected to this physical interfaceless bridge. The following diagram shows a network diagram of a bridge with and without a physical network interface:

In the...