Chapter 29. Starting a service within an isolated VRF network With virtual routing and forwarding (VRF), you can create isolated networks with a routing table that is different to the main routing table of the operating system. You can then start services and applications so that they have only access to the network defined in that routing table. 29.1. Configuring a VRF device To use virtual routing and forwarding (VRF), you create a VRF device and attach a physical or virtual network interface and routing information to it. Warning To prevent that you lock out yourself out remotely, perform this procedure on the local console or remotely over a network interface that you do not want to assign to the VRF device. Prerequisites You are logged in locally or using a network interface that is different to the one you want to assign to the VRF device. Procedure Create the vrf0 connection with a same-named virtual device, and attach it to routing table 1000 : Add the enp1s0 device to the vrf0 connection, and configure the IP settings: This command creates the enp1s0 connection as a port of the vrf0 connection. Due to this configuration, the routing information are automatically assigned to the routing table 1000 that is associated with the vrf0 device. If you require static routes in the isolated network: Add the static routes: This adds a route to the 198.51.100.0/24 network that uses 192.0.2.2 as the router. Activate the connection: Verification Display the IP settings of the device that is associated with vrf0 : Display the VRF devices and their associated routing table: Display the main routing table: The main routing table does not mention any routes associated with the device enp1s0 device or the 192.0.2.1/24 subnet. Display the routing table 1000 : The default entry indicates that services that use this routing table, use 192.0.2.254 as their default gateway and not the default gateway in the main routing table. Execute the traceroute utility in the network associated with vrf0 to verify that the utility uses the route from table 1000 : The first hop is the default gateway that is assigned to the routing table 1000 and not the default gateway from the system's main routing table. Additional resources ip-vrf(8) man page on your system 29.2. Starting a service within an isolated VRF network You can configure a service, such as the Apache HTTP Server, to start within an isolated virtual routing and forwarding (VRF) network. Important Services can only bind to local IP addresses that are in the same VRF network. Prerequisites You configured the vrf0 device. You configured Apache HTTP Server to listen only on the IP address that is assigned to the interface associated with the vrf0 device. Procedure Display the content of the httpd systemd service: You require the content of the ExecStart parameter in a later step to run the same command within the isolated VRF network. Create the /etc/systemd/system/httpd.service.d/ directory: Create the /etc/systemd/system/httpd.service.d/override.conf file with the following content: To override the ExecStart parameter, you first need to unset it and then set it to the new value as shown. Reload systemd. Restart the httpd service. Verification Display the process IDs (PID) of httpd processes: Display the VRF association for the PIDs, for example: Display all PIDs associated with the vrf0 device: Additional resources ip-vrf(8) man page on your system

Commands:
nmcli connection add type vrf ifname vrf0 con-name vrf0 table 1000 ipv4.method disabled ipv6.method disabled
nmcli connection add type ethernet con-name enp1s0 ifname enp1s0 controller vrf0 ipv4.method manual ipv4.address 192.0.2.1/24 ipv4.gateway 192.0.2.254
nmcli connection modify enp1s0 +ipv4.routes " 198.51.100.0/24 192.0.2.2 "
nmcli connection up enp1s0
ip -br addr show vrf vrf0 enp1s0 UP 192.0.2.1/24
ip vrf show Name Table ----------------------- vrf0 1000
ip route show default via 203.0.113.0/24 dev enp7s0 proto static metric 100
ip route show table 1000 default via 192.0.2.254 dev enp1s0 proto static metric 101 broadcast 192.0.2.0 dev enp1s0 proto kernel scope link src 192.0.2.1 192.0.2.0 /24 dev enp1s0 proto kernel scope link src 192.0.2.1 metric 101 local 192.0.2.1 dev enp1s0 proto kernel scope host src 192.0.2.1 broadcast 192.0.2.255 dev enp1s0 proto kernel scope link src 192.0.2.1 198.51.100.0/24 via 192.0.2.2 dev enp1s0 proto static metric 101
ip vrf exec vrf0 traceroute 203.0.113.1 traceroute to 203.0.113.1 ( 203.0.113.1 ), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets 1 192.0.2.254 ( 192.0.2.254 ) 0.516 ms 0.459 ms 0.430 ms
systemctl cat httpd [Service] ExecStart=/usr/sbin/httpd USDOPTIONS -DFOREGROUND
mkdir /etc/systemd/system/httpd.service.d/
[Service] ExecStart= ExecStart=/usr/sbin/ip vrf exec vrf0 /usr/sbin/httpd USDOPTIONS -DFOREGROUND
systemctl daemon-reload
systemctl restart httpd
pidof -c httpd 1904
ip vrf identify 1904 vrf0
ip vrf pids vrf0 1904 httpd