[virt-tools-list] State of Bridge Networking?

[Dean Hunter]

I have learned a lot of combinations that do not work, but I must be
missing the one little piece to make a combination work. I would like to
configure my virtual machine guests so that they network like peers of
the virtual machine host and the other host on the physical network. I
would like to build two VM guests with static IP addresses; one for
FreeIPA, which includes DNS, and one for Linux-Apache-MySQL-PHP. I would
also like to build various VM guests with dynamic IP addresses for
client OSes. In addition, there are several peers of the VM host with
dynamic IP addresses that I would like to also use as clients of the
FreeIPA and LAMP VMs.

I have seen that Network Manager on the VM host does not work well with
bridges, but changes are on the way: Bug Report 199246. I have seen all
the original configuration instructions using the network service
instead of Network Manager, but then I have also been advised that it
should no longer be necessary to use the network service. I have seen
articles at linux-kvm.com about using macvtap but I have also seen bug
reports that virt-install and virt-manager implementations do not offer
the same capabilities for managing this option; and that their code is
being merged to prevent this problem, but it is not ready yet.

I started with the virt-manager because it seemed a simple place to
start learning. Then I looked at virt-install so that I could script the
VM builds to simplify testing and to document configuration choices. Now
I am down to virsh and XML files comparing the XML before and after
changes. I do not mind using virsh in scripts if that is the best way to
build VMs quickly and repeatedly.

Right now I have one Fedora 18 VM guest running with macvtap and a
static IP address on a Fedora 18 VM host. The VM guest can ping to the
Internet, but not the VM host or peers of the VM host.

I welcome your suggestions.