Connecting to Existing Networks and VLANs

The ability to connect containerized apps to external systems and physical networks is important. A common example is partially containerized apps where the parts running in containers need to be able to communicate with the parts not running in containers.

MACVLAN

The built-in MACVLAN driver (transparent if you’re using Windows containers) was created with this in mind. It gives every container its own IP and MAC address on the external physical network, making each one look, smell, and feel like a physical server or VM. This is shown in the figure below.