Chapter 3. Cloud Infrastructure Concepts
16
you must also configure a network to carry public traffic. CloudPlatform takes care of presenting the
necessary network configuration steps to you in the UI when you add a new zone.
3.8.2. Basic Zone Guest IP Addresses
When basic networking is used, CloudPlatform will assign IP addresses in the CIDR of the pod to the
guests in that pod. The administrator must add a direct IP range on the pod for this purpose. These
IPs are in the same VLAN as the hosts.
3.8.3. Advanced Zone Network Traffic Types
When advanced networking is used, there can be multiple physical networks in the zone. Each
physical network can carry one or more traffic types, and you need to let CloudPlatform know which
type of network traffic you want each network to carry. The traffic types in an advanced zone are:
• Guest. When end users run VMs, they generate guest traffic. The guest VMs communicate with
each other over a network that can be referred to as the guest network. This network can be
isolated or shared. In an isolated guest network, the administrator needs to reserve VLAN ranges to
provide isolation for each CloudPlatform account’s network (potentially a large number of VLANs). In
a shared guest network, all guest VMs share a single network.
• Management. When CloudPlatform’s internal resources communicate with each other, they
generate management traffic. This includes communication between hosts, system VMs (VMs
used by CloudPlatform to perform various tasks in the cloud), and any other component that
communicates directly with the CloudPlatform Management Server. You must configure the IP
range for the system VMs to use.
• Public. Public traffic is generated when VMs in the cloud access the Internet. Publicly accessible IPs
must be allocated for this purpose. End users can use the CloudPlatform UI to acquire these IPs to
implement NAT between their guest network and the public network, as described in “Acquiring a
New IP Address” in the Administration Guide.
• Storage. Traffic such as VM templates and snapshots, which is sent between the secondary storage
VM and secondary storage servers. CloudPlatform uses a separate Network Interface Controller
(NIC) named storage NIC for storage network traffic. Use of a storage NIC that always operates on
a high bandwidth network allows fast template and snapshot copying. You must configure the IP
range to use for the storage network.
These traffic types can each be on a separate physical network, or they can be combined with certain
restrictions. When you use the Add Zone wizard in the UI to create a new zone, you are guided into
making only valid choices.
3.8.4. Advanced Zone Guest IP Addresses
When advanced networking is used, the administrator can create additional networks for use by the
guests. These networks can span the zone and be available to all accounts, or they can be scoped
to a single account, in which case only the named account may create guests that attach to these
networks. The networks are defined by a VLAN ID, IP range, and gateway. The administrator may
provision thousands of these networks if desired. Additionally, the administrator can reserve a part of
the IP address space for non-CloudPlatform VMs and servers (see Section 16.15, “IP Reservation in
Isolated Guest Networks”).