Managed Private Network

You can create a managed Private Network through the Portal, the CLI, or using tools like Terraform.

In this example, we will use the CLI:

$ exo compute private-network create managed-network \
    --zone ch-gva-2      \
    --start-ip 10.0.0.20 \
    --end-ip 10.0.0.200  \
    --netmask 255.255.255.0
 ✔ Creating Private Network "managed-network"... 3s
┼─────────────────┼──────────────────────────────────────┼
│ PRIVATE NETWORK │                                      │
┼─────────────────┼──────────────────────────────────────┼
│ ID              │ 0f621ed0-a161-4c9a-a533-51c8e3504a13 │
│ Name            │ managed-network                      │
│ Description     │                                      │
│ Zone            │ ch-gva-2                             │
│ Type            │ managed                              │
│ Start IP        │ 10.0.0.20                            │
│ End IP          │ 10.0.0.200                           │
│ Netmask         │ 255.255.255.0                        │
│ Leases          │ -                                    │
┼─────────────────┼──────────────────────────────────────┼

The --start-ip, --end-ip and --netmask flags allow you to define the IP range of your Private Network:

Some values are forbidden:

  • the IP address for --start-ip must be lower than the --end-ip, and cannot be the network address.
  • the IP address for --end-ip cannot be the network broadcast address or the last IP of the network, because this IP will be the IP address of the DHCP server.
  • you cannot shrink the network range, you can only increase it. For example, exo compute private-network update <NETWORK> --end-ip 10.0.0.230 will increase the network range.

In this example, the DHCP server will assign IP addresses between 10.0.0.20 and 10.0.0.200 to the network interfaces. This means that you can only have at most 180 machines in this network.

Static IP addresses

You can assign static IP addresses to private interfaces. The IP address must be in the network range, but not necessarily in the network IP range.

For example, you will be able to assign static IP addresses between 10.0.0.1 and 10.0.0.253 for the network defined above. The IP address must not be already used by a network interface.

Using the exo CLI, you have two ways to configure a static IP address on your Private Network interface:

  • Specify the static IP address with the --ip flag when attaching your instance to a managed Private Network by running the exo compute instance private-network attach command.
  • Run the exo compute instance private-network update-ip command.

Interfaces configuration

On Debian and Ubuntu, you will need to configure the corresponding network interface(s) - e.g. eth1 - for DHCP.

Ubuntu >= 18.04 (Bionic) [netplan]

In /etc/netplan/eth1.yaml:

network:
  version: 2
  ethernets:
    eth1:
      dhcp4: true

Followed by sudo netplan apply to bring the interface up.

Debian and Ubuntu < 18.04 [ifconfig]

In /etc/network/interfaces.d/eth1.conf:

allow-hotplug eth1
iface eth1 inet dhcp

Followed by ifup eth1 to bring the interface up.

Using Cloud-Init (for Debian or Ubuntu)

To automate your Private Network setup, you may include the ad-hoc configuration in your Compute instance’s user-data, e.g. for netplan (Ubuntu 18.04):

#cloud-config
write_files:
  - path: /etc/netplan/eth1.yaml
    content: |
      network:
        version: 2
        ethernets:
          eth1:
            dhcp4: true      

runcmd:
  - [ netplan, apply ]

Granular DHCP Options Support via the CLI

Exoscale’s Managed Private Networks support granular DHCP configurations, providing enhanced control over network settings through the exo CLI.

  • [DHCP Option 3] Default Gateway (Router): Sets the IP of the default gateway for external traffic.
  • [DHCP Option 6] DNS Servers: Specifies DNS server IPs for domain name resolution.
  • [DHCP Option 42] NTP Servers: Defines IPs for time synchronization with NTP servers.
  • [DHCP Option 119] Domain Search List: Supplies a list of domain suffixes supporting multi-domain environments (limited to 255 octets).