libvirt users - Apr 2016 - Re: Networking issues with lxc containers in AWS EC2

I've created an EC2 AMI for AWS that essentially represents a CentOS 7 
"hypervisor" image. I deploy instances of these in AWS and create an 
number of libvirt based lxc containers on each of these instances. The 
containers run fine within a single host and have no problem 
communicating with themselves as well as with their host, and vice 
versa. However, containers hosted in one EC2 instance cannot communicate 
with containers hosted in another EC2 instance.

We've tried various tweaks with our Amazon VPC but have been unable to 
find a way to solve this networking issue. If I use something like 
VMware or KVM and create VMs using this same hypervisor image, the 
containers running under these VMs can communicate with with each other, 
even across different hosts.

My real question is has anyone tried deploying EC2 images that host 
containers and have figured out how to successfully communicate between 
containers on different hosts?

Peter

On 03/31/2016 06:43 PM, Peter Steele wrote:
> I've created an EC2 AMI for AWS that essentially represents a CentOS 7 
> "hypervisor" image. I deploy instances of these in AWS and create
an
> number of libvirt based lxc containers on each of these instances. The 
> containers run fine within a single host and have no problem 
> communicating with themselves as well as with their host, and vice 
> versa. However, containers hosted in one EC2 instance cannot 
> communicate with containers hosted in another EC2 instance.
>
> We've tried various tweaks with our Amazon VPC but have been unable to 
> find a way to solve this networking issue. If I use something like 
> VMware or KVM and create VMs using this same hypervisor image, the 
> containers running under these VMs can communicate with with each 
> other, even across different hosts.
What is the <interface> config of your nested containers? Do they each 
get a public IP address?
>
> My real question is has anyone tried deploying EC2 images that host 
> containers and have figured out how to successfully communicate 
> between containers on different hosts?
>
No experience with EC2, sorry.

On 04/01/2016 02:07 PM, Laine Stump wrote:
> On 03/31/2016 06:43 PM, Peter Steele wrote:
>> I've created an EC2 AMI for AWS that essentially represents a
CentOS
>> 7 "hypervisor" image. I deploy instances of these in AWS and
create
>> an number of libvirt based lxc containers on each of these instances. 
>> The containers run fine within a single host and have no problem 
>> communicating with themselves as well as with their host, and vice 
>> versa. However, containers hosted in one EC2 instance cannot 
>> communicate with containers hosted in another EC2 instance.
>>
>> We've tried various tweaks with our Amazon VPC but have been unable
>> to find a way to solve this networking issue. If I use something like 
>> VMware or KVM and create VMs using this same hypervisor image, the 
>> containers running under these VMs can communicate with with each 
>> other, even across different hosts.
>
> What is the <interface> config of your nested containers? Do they
each
> get a public IP address?
Yes, they all have public IPs on the same subnet. When deployed in a VM 
environment on premises, the containers have no problems. Amazon clearly 
does something with the packets though and the containers can't talk to 
each other.
>
>>
>> My real question is has anyone tried deploying EC2 images that host 
>> containers and have figured out how to successfully communicate 
>> between containers on different hosts?
>>
>
> No experience with EC2, sorry.
>
I think we'll need to go to Amazon themselves to resolve this issue. 
There is very little information out there about how to get lxc 
containers to work properly in EC2.