Description of problem: Currently, there does not appear to be a way in the UI to directly that a NIC should use a bridge-type interface with an Open vSwitch virtualport. The "specify shared device name" option under the NIC's details page should have an option to specify a virtualport type, so that virt-manager can produce the following XML (instead of having to insert by hand): <interface type='bridge'> <mac address='aa:bb:cc:dd:ee:ff'/> <source bridge='some-openvswitch-network'/> <virtualport type='openvswitch'/> <model type='virtio'/> <address type='pci' domain='0x0000' bus='0x00' slot='0x05' function='0x0'/> </interface>
+1 to this, except that I also need to specify the VLAN tag(s). For example, <interface type='bridge'> <mac address='52:54:00:91:b0:3f'/> <source bridge='ovs0'/> <vlan> <tag id='250'/> </vlan> <virtualport type='openvswitch'> <parameters interfaceid='25f2a25d-cfed-58f8-be38-2a3d3f057233'/> </virtualport> <model type='virtio'/> <address type='pci' domain='0x0000' bus='0x00' slot='0x03' function='0x0'/> </interface> Given the level of flexibility that Open vSwitch provides, I tend to think that this is where the libvirt networks/portgroups abstraction (which I've not previously used) can come in handy. I.e., just make sure that virt-manager can handle the types of network XML shown here: http://libvirt.org/formatnetwork.html#elementVlanTag http://libvirt.org/formatnetwork.html#elementsPortgroup (Providing a nice GUI for creating the network XML can be left as an exercise for later.)
Also kashyap's notes here: http://kashyapc.com/2013/07/13/configuring-libvirt-guests-with-an-open-vswitch-bridge/ virt-manager does support selecting portgroups, if the virtual network has portgroups in its XML. But no UI for creating portgroups yet
Some more bits from laine here: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/virt/2014-September/004174.html
(In reply to Cole Robinson from comment #3) > Some more bits from laine here: > > https://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/virt/2014-September/004174.html I can confirm that this works. From my POV, this pretty much addresses the issue. It would certainly be *nice* to have a GUI for creating Open vSwitch-bridged networks, but defining the libvirt network "manually" one time isn't nearly the burden that having to manually edit the domain XML for every guest is.
Upstream virt-manager was extended to handle openvswitch <network> explicitly, and set virtualport type='openvswitch' in the VM XML to match. So create a virtual network like <network> <name>ovsbr1</name> <forward mode='bridge'/> <bridge name='ovsbr1'/> <virtualport type='openvswitch'/> ... </network> Then when you select that as a network source in virt-manager, you'll get the option to tweak virtualport values, and select portgroups if any were defined. I think that mostly covers things here