TL;DR instead of creating a VLAN on a physical interface (like bond0.123), then turning that into a bridge for a VM, create a tagged interface on the main bridge (e.g. br0.123) and then add that into a new bridge for a VM.
Create a new bridge for the VLAN.
nmcli con add ifname br-123 type bridge con-name br-123
nmcli con modify br-123 ipv4.method disabled ipv6.method ignore
nmcli con up br-123
Create the VLAN on existing bridge (assuming br0 already exists) and attach to the new bridge (br-123).
nmcli con add type vlan con-name br0.123 ifname br0.123 dev br0 id 123
nmcli con modify br0.123 master br-123 slave-type bridge
nmcli con up br0.123
This will allow two VMs on the same host to talk to each other over the VLAN, where one is using a tagged interface on br0 (as a trunk) and the other is using br-123 (as an access port or native for VLAN 123).
+------+ +-------+ +------------------+
| eth0 |--| | | VM1 |
+------+ | | +----------+ | +----------+ |
| bond0 |---| br0 |---|---| eth0.123 | |
+------+ | | | (bridge) | | | (VLAN) | |
| eth1 |--| | +----------+ | +----------+ |
+------+ +-------+ | +------------------+
|
| +------------------+
| | VM2 |
+---------+ +----------+ | +----------+ |
| br0.123 |---| br-123 |---|---| eth0 | |
| (VLAN) | | (bridge) | | | (native) | |
+---------+ +----------+ | +----------+ |
+------------------+
Some background
A common method for connecting VMs to a real network is to attach them to a bridge. In this case, a bridge is created on the KVM host and a physical interface is attached to it. Network interfaces of the VMs are then attached to that bridge and they are directly on the same network as the host (we’ll call this a flat network).
+------+ +-------+ +----------------+
| eth0 |--| | | VM |
+------+ | | +----------+ | +--------+ |
| bond0 |---| br0 |---|---| eth0 | |
+------+ | | | (bridge) | | | (flat) | |
| eth1 |--| | +----------+ | +--------+ |
+------+ +-------+ +----------------+
That’s great, but now they’re also connected to everything else on the network and maybe you didn’t want that. One solution to this is to use VLANs to put VMs on isolated networks.
The bridge mentioned above could also be used as a trunk, which can carry tagged VLAN traffic that the VM creates (assuming the physical switch is configured to accept those VLANs). In this instance, the VM would create a VLAN on its network interface and tagged traffic will flow out of the bridge onto the physical network, letting that VM talk to other VMs or devices on that same VLAN.
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