[CentOS] disconnected NIC under CentOS 6

Tue May 1 17:38:46 UTC 2012
Boris Epstein <borepstein at gmail.com>

Hello all,

I've got a multi-NIC machine on which I am running Centos 6.2. I am trying
to have a NIC configured with an IP address but not connected to anything.
The reason for this is to create a network currently only used by VM's
residing on the machine, with that NIC configured to have an IP address
that is a part of that network, with a view of connecting real machines to
the same network in the future. How can I implement that? Currently ifup
just refuses to bring that NIC up.

Thanks.

Boris.