Information on Container Bridge Network and default range of IP address

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

This article gives information about the Container bridge Network, what it is used for, Setup/ define and how to Specify a range of IP address on a bridge network in VMware vSphere Integrated Containers

Environment

VMware vSphere Integrated Containers 1.x
VMware vSphere Integrated Containers 1.0.x

Resolution

Container Bridge Network:

 

It is the network used for containers to communicate with each other. With VIC you can setup multiple bridged networks. Each VCH requires a unique bridge network. The bridge network is a port group on a distributed virtual switch.

 

IMPORTANT:
o not use the bridge network for any other VM workloads, or as a bridge for more than one VCH.

 

Set up or Define bridge network:

 

Short name: -b

You define the bridge networks by setting the "--bridge-network" option when you run vic-machine create.

You can define a range of IP addresses that additional bridge networks can use by defining the bridge-network-range option when you run vic-machine create.

 

A port group that container VMs use to communicate with each other.

The bridge-network option is mandatory if you are deploying a VCH to vCenter Server.

In a vCenter Server environment, before you run vic-machine create, you must create a distributed virtual switch and a port group. You must add the target ESXi host or hosts to the distributed virtual switch, and assign a VLAN ID to the port group, to ensure that the bridge network is isolated.

You pass the name of the port group to the bridge-network option. Each VCH requires its own port group. If you specify an invalid port group name, vic-machine create fails and suggests valid port groups.

 

 

Specify a range of IP addresses for additional bridge networks.(Advanced Options)

 

--bridge-network-range

Short name: --bnr

 

The range of IP addresses that additional bridge networks can use when container application developers use docker network create to create new bridge networks.

 

Note: If you do not specify the bridge-network-range option, the default IP range for bridge networks is 172.16.0.0/12.

When you specify the bridge network IP range, you specify the IP range as a CIDR. The smallest subnet that you can specify is /16.

If you specify an invalid value for --bridge-network-range, vic-machine create fails with an error.

 

Eg: --bridge-network-range 192.168.100.0/16

Additional Information

Additional information is available at below Github links:

 

https://vmware.github.io/vic-product/assets/files/html/1.1/vic_vsphere_admin/networks.html#bridge

https://vmware.github.io/vic-product/assets/files/html/1.1/vic_vsphere_admin/vch_installer_options.html#bridge

https://vmware.github.io/vic-product/assets/files/html/1.1/vic_vsphere_admin/vch_installer_options.html#bridge