Docker Cookbook

3.8 Setting Up a Custom Bridge for Docker | 89

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To bring down the bridge, execute the following two commands:
$ sudo ip link set cookbook down
$ sudo brctl delbr cookbook
3.9 Using OVS with Docker
Problem
You know how to use your own bridge to network your Docker containers (see
Recipe 3.8
), but you would like to use the Open vSwitch (OVS) virtual switch instead
of the standard Linux bridge. Maybe you want to build your own GRE, or VXLAN-
based overlay, or you want to build a software-defined network solution with a net‐
work controller. OVS provides programmatic extensions and control using the Open‐
Flow 
protocol
and the OVSDB management 
protocol
.
Solution
As of Docker 1.7, Open vSwitch is not yet supported natively. You
can use it, but you will need to use a tool like pipework (see 
Recipe
3.7
) or a utility called 
ovs-docker
, a manual process to build the
network stack of the containers. It should be supported in a future
version of Docker Network (see 
Recipe 3.14
).
Use 
Open vSwitch
 (OVS) as your bridge and specify its name in the Docker daemon
configuration file.
On your Docker host, start by installing the packages for OVS; for example, on
Ubuntu 14.04:
$ sudo apt-get -y install openvswitch-switch
If you want a more recent version of Open vSwitch, you can build
it from 
source
 relatively easily.
Now create a bridge and bring it up:
$ sudo ovs-vsctl add-br ovs-cookbook
$ sudo ip link set ovs-cookbook up
You are now ready to use pipework (see 
Recipe 3.7
) to build the network stack of
containers attached to this Open vSwitch bridge. You will need to start containers
without a network stack (i.e., 
--net=none
)—for example: