Bridges & Bonds

Vapor supports standard Linux networking features for aggregating links and bridging traffic to virtual environments.

Linux Bridges

A Linux bridge acts like a virtual network switch. By attaching a physical interface to a bridge, Virtual Machines can share that physical connection to access the external network.

Creating a Bridge

1. Navigate to Network > Bridges.
2. Click Create Bridge.
3. Provide a name (e.g., br0).
4. Select the physical interfaces or bonds to attach as ports.
5. (Optional) Assign an IP address to the bridge for host management access.

Network Bonds (Link Aggregation)

Bonding allows you to combine multiple physical interfaces into a single logical "bond" interface. This provides redundancy (if one cable fails, the other takes over) and potentially increased bandwidth.

Creating a Bond

1. Navigate to Network > Bonds.
2. Click Create Bond.
3. Select a Bonding Mode:
   • Active-Backup: Fault tolerance only. One interface is active; the other stands by.
   • 802.3ad (LACP): Requires a managed switch configured for LACP. Provides both fault tolerance and load balancing.
   • Balance-RR / Balance-XOR: Other specific load-balancing algorithms.
4. Select the slave physical interfaces to include in the bond.

Once created, a Bond can be assigned an IP address or attached as a port to a Bridge.