For some cloud customers, it is important for end customers to have self-serve management tools that help them to distribute and assign IP addresses even for their private networks.
With Flexiant Cloud Orchestrator’s network orchestration, service providers benefit from not having to touch their network equipment whenever their customers request a new network – whether public or private. While the IP address space management for public networks has been a key feature for long, now service providers can offer their customers the ability to choose, assign and manage their own subnets also for their private networks.
The fully automated private IP address space management enables customers to create private networks and add a subnet to it. Capabilities available include:
- The subnet creation form allows service provider customers to specify what IP subnet they want to use, and whether they want the Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) to also assign a default gateway.
- When creating Network Interface Controllers (NICs) sitting on a private network, customers have the ability to select the specific IP address that they want to be assigned.
- Customers can monitor the usage of the whole subnet, seeing what IP addresses are in use and which ones are not.
Why is this useful? Due to IPv4 address shortages, private networks are increasingly used. If these are frequently used by a service provider, the ability to automate the management is key to enjoy a fully functional cloud infrastructure service. Moreover, private backend networks (e.g. hosting databases) and, best practice enterprise network architecture implementations demand that isolation which is delivered by private networks.
Why does this benefit service providers? Again, two main reasons:
- Service providers can fulfill more use cases since more complex network topologies can be delivered via the Flexiant Cloud Orchestrator control panel and API, helping to broaden their market reach.
- Service providers can improve the customer experience by delivering self-service private IP address space management letting customers do their job faster and easier.
For service providers’ customers, they’ll now have the flexibility and control over management of subnets from which IP addresses will be allocated. The feature also enables servers on private networks to have outbound access to the Internet via the DHCP gateway for security updates etc., and customers can have direct control over the assignment of the IP address via the control panel and API, as part of the provisioning process. And finally, private IP address space management makes it convenient to allocate IP addresses without having to worry about using addresses that are already taken.
Want to see this feature in action? Get in touch and we will give you a short demonstration. If you like what you see, let us know so we can get you benefiting from Flexiant Cloud Orchestrator as soon as possible.
