Overview
Private networking is a useful feature that you may wish to utilize for advanced cloud setups. For a description of private networking and how to have it enabled on your account, please review the following article:
Private network options
Once DreamHost technical support has enabled private networking, you can add a private network to your account. Please review the options below to determine settings for the private network.
Network block
There are various private network blocks that are available for use with private networks which are specified in CIDR format. Common examples of this are 10.0.0.0/24 or 192.168.0.0/24, however there are other networks to choose from as well. In the example below, the address 10.0.0.0/24 is used.
DHCP
When a subnet is defined, DHCP can be set to enabled or disabled. It can also be changed later if desired. When DHCP is enabled, newly created instances run cloud-init at startup and detect it, therefore determining it isn't necessary to hard-code network settings into the operating system.
If it is disabled, these settings are hard-coded. Having DHCP enabled can help with creating snapshots and new instances from those snapshots as the snapshots won't have hard-coded network configs in them.
Checking if Private Networking has been enabled
After you have requested that Private Networking be enabled on your account, check your DreamCompute dashboard to confirm it's enabled.
In the left pane, click the Project > Network > Networks tabs. To the right you'll see a Create Network button. If the button is greyed out and says 'Quota exceeded', private networking has not been enabled on your project yet. Once it has been enabled, you'll be able to press this button to add a private network.
Adding the private network
- Log in to your DreamCompute dashboard.
- Click the Project > Network > Networks tab in the left pane.
- Click the Create Network button. A new window appears.
- Enter a name for the network such as "private-network".
- Leave the "Enable Admin State" and "Create Subnet" boxes checked.
- Click the Next button to proceed to the Subnet tab. An optional Subnet name can be specified if desired.
- On the Subnet tab, enter the CIDR range that you decided on above for the private network into the "Network Address" field.
- Click the Next button when finished to proceed to the Subnet Details tab.
- Check or uncheck the Enable DHCP checkbox depending on the decision made in the DHCP section above.
- Enter the values 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 on their own lines in the "DNS Name Servers" field.
- Click the Create button.
Create a router
- Navigate to the Project > Network > Routers tab.
- Click the + Create Router button on the top right.
- A new window appears.
- Enter a name for the router such as "private-router".
- Leave the 'Enable Admin State' box checked.
- Select "public" from the External Network dropdown.
- Click the Create Router button.
- Click on the router's name once the router is displayed to navigate to the router details page.
- Click the Interfaces tab that is displayed on the top left.
- Click on the + Add Interface button on the top right.
- Select the private network created in steps #1-4 above in the Subnet dropdown.
- Click the Submit button.
Using the private network
This completes the process of adding a private network to the account. To select the private network and add a floating IP address, follow the additional steps below.
- Navigate to the Project > Compute > Instances tab.
- Click the Launch Instance button on the top right.
- Complete the Details, Source, Flavor, and Key Pair sections as normal.
- Click the up arrow button "⇑" in the Networks tab to add the private network you created to this instance.
- Click the Launch Instance button to launch the instance.
Floating IP association
- Navigate to the Project > Compute > Instances tab.
- Click the down arrow to the right of the instance to expand a dropdown menu, and then select Associate Floating IP.
- Click the "+" button to provision a floating IP if needed. The provision window has only one "Pool" available named "Public" to select, and an Allocate IP button to complete the process.
- Select an available floating IP from the IP Address dropdown and the private IP address of the above instance in the Port to be associated dropdown.
- Click the Associate button.
- Verify the floating IP assignment. The floating IP address assigned appears on the Project > Compute > Instances page in the IP Address column.
If you have additional questions about floating IP addresses, please review the following article: