Static External IP Addresses

[csimwong]

I'm a current Lab Manager user and planning to move to vCloud Director 5.1.

In Lab Manager, the VMs would receive an External IP address assigned from a pool of addresses when using the fenced NAT'd option.  The big complaint is how the External IP would change each time the VMs were undeployed and redeployed.

In the latest version of vCloud Director, I assume there is an option for similar fenced NAT'd networking on the VMs.

Can anyone comment on whether or not the External IP adddresses change whenever the VMs are powered on/off and/or undeployed/redeployed?

Any info would be much appreciated.   Thanks.

[JayhawkEric · Accepted solution]

You can mimic the NAT'd functionality from Lab Manager by creating a vApp Internal Network and then connecting it to your External network within the Organization.  If you have an IP Pool configured for this network and choose this selection on your VM's within your vApp it'll function just like Lab Manager did.

When you create this connection to the external network within your vApp you decide if you want it NAT'd and/or Firewall'd.  You can also check a box at the far right to force it to keep the IP addresses from the external network IP Pool.

The drawback to this is if the config is cloned the IP addresses go with it.  You will only be able to start one vApp at a time unless you change the networking on the cloned vApp.  We do this for some long-term testing/development vApps where we have to create other network ACL's in order to connect to it.

Eric

[IamTHEvilONE]

You can mimic the NAT'd functionality from Lab Manager by creating a vApp Internal Network and then connecting it to your External network within the Organization.  If you have an IP Pool configured for this network and choose this selection on your VM's within your vApp it'll function just like Lab Manager did.

You should also be able to do it with vApp networks, which is the close equivilent to Lab Manager "Virtual Networks".  When you create a vApp network, you can assign an network to NAT onto.  This is basically your "Connect Virtual to Physical" feature.  This is just in case you used Virtual Networks and the Connect feature, verses Physical Networks and Fencing.  The two features were virtually identical, but just had different names.

The drawback to this is if the config is cloned the IP addresses go with it.  You will only be able to start one vApp at a time unless you change the networking on the cloned vApp.  We do this for some long-term testing/development vApps where we have to create other network ACL's in order to connect to it.

If you directly clone a vApp with the "Retain External IP Addresses", the source system should retain the setting ... the destination system should not.  I haven't tested this, but would make sense to me.

If both systems have the Retain External IP setting, you'll have to disable this before powering it on again so that the new NAT IPs are assigned.  Then you can re-enable the feature to "lock in" the newly assigned IP addresses.

[benjaminportman]

Is there a way to assign static external IP addresses in Lab Manager 4?

[IamTHEvilONE]

Ben, you should really start a new thread in the correct forum: https://communities.vmware.com/community/vmtn/vcenter/labmanager?view=discussions

the answer is no.  if you use any NAT/Fencing feature in Lab Manager ... the external IP assigned will change with any undeploy/deploy.