IP address management
Introduction
Being a software product for shared-hosting automation, ISPmanager 6 delivers a wide range of tools for managing IP addresses.
IP address management is based on managing the IP database, which can be either a local database or remote IPmanager 6.
Sources of IP addresses
There are two main types of IP addresses:
- IP address from the IP pool
- IP address assigned to the server interface
IP address of the first type are taken from the control panel's pool. IP addresses of the second type are assigned to server interface before it is added to other servers or when an administrator adds it and the control panel gets the information about them while collecting statistical information.
If you are working with IP addresses that were taken not from the pool, you wont' be able to delete an IP from the server interface through the control panel.
Roles of IP addresses
Each IP address can have of the of following roles:
| Role name | Description |
|---|---|
| Shared | Can be used by any use of the control panel |
| Private | Is assigned to a certain user and cannot be used by other users |
| Mutual | Can be assigned to several users and can be used only by its owners |
| Free | Cannot be assigned to any user, it is currently not used, and will be available when adding a new IP address |
| Service | Is not assigned to any user, cannot be used in the control panel |
Managing IP addresses
Adding an IP address
A role and the server to which the IP will be assigned, are selected for the newly created IP address. By default a new address is created only in the internal database and is not assigned to any server.
A "free" IP that is not assigned to any server, will be used for the newly created IP address. Otherwise, a new address will be taken from the pool (or from IPmanager). A new IP address will be also taken for the newly created IP address with the "free" role.
Editing IP address
Changing a current role of the IP address may require different checks and actions (the role in the column can be changed into the role in the raw, e.g. "Shared" → "Mutual" using check "1"):
| IP address role | Shared | Private | Mutual | Free | Service |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Shared | — | — | — | — | — |
| Private | 2 | 4 | 2 | — | — |
| Mutual | 1 | — | — | — | — |
| Free | 3 | 3 | 3 | — | — |
| Service | 3 | 3 | 3 | — | — |
- The system adds all current owners of the IP address into the list of owners
- Checks that IP address is not assigned to the owner's objects. If yes, the operation will be cancelled
- Checks that the IP address is not assigned to any subject. If yes, the operation will be cancelled
- Changes the owner. Checks that this IP is not used by the current owner's subject. If it is assigned to any subject, the operation will be cancelled.
Objects to which an IP address can be assigned are Web-domains, or mail domains.
When you edit the IP address, you can also unassign it from the server interface. The system will check that the IP is not used by any object on that server.
Deleting IP address
Deleting an IP address will delete it from the list of IPs and mark it as free in the local base (or in IPmanager). The IP address can be deleted only if it is not assigned to an object of the control panel. You cannot delete the IP addresses that were collected from the servers' interfaces (not from a pool of IP addresses).
Deleting owner of IP address
Deleting the owner of IP address will delete that IP from the server interface and will mark it as "free". It can be then used for a adding a new IP address.
Load balancing for "shared" IP addresses
Load balancing for "shared" IP addresses can be implemented by allocating items within a role. I.e. when creating an item of one role, by default, an Ip address is selected in such a way to spread the equal number of shared IP addresses.
ipv4 and ipv6 are balanced separately for web-domains : two ip-addresses one for each type will be allocated to an item.
For domain names the balancing is performed based on web-domain availability using the same principle.
For mail domains, a free IPv4 address will be selected.
if a user has the allocated IP address, it will be selected by default.