Manage Unmanaged Networks

Unmanaged Networks are a special type of external network: Abiquo does not manage the IP addresses for virtual machines attached to these networks. You must allocate these IP addresses outside of Abiquo. You can assign the IP address to virtual machines using the corporate DHCP server or by manually entering configuration with ifconfig in a shell, for example. Unmanaged networks can use public or private IP address ranges and they can be shared across one or more virtual datacenters. 

The Abiquo DHCP server does not allocate IP addresses to virtual machines on unmanaged networks. And the virtual machines on unmanaged networks do not communicate with the Abiquo DHCP Server, so they will not receive static routes set using DHCP in Abiquo.

Administer unmanaged networks on the External network tab in Infrastructure view.

View Unmanaged Networks

Unmanaged networks are displayed with  (unmanaged) beside their name in the network list on the External networks page.

If you click on an unmanaged network in the list on the External networks tab, Abiquo will only display the gateway address and any addresses you registered, for example, during virtual machine capture. 

From these screens the cloud administrator or other authorized user can perform these actions:

Create VLANs for Unmanaged Networks

Before you begin:

• Obtain the network details from your Network Administrator, including the VLAN tag and the network address and gateway

To create unmanaged networks do these steps:

1. In Infrastructure view, go to the external networks page of the Network tab
2. Click the add button at the top of the External networks page and complete the form
   1. External and unmanaged networks are created with the same form. Mark the Unmanaged checkbox to create an unmanaged network
   2. You must enter the network and the gateway for IPv4 networks

IPv4 networks

No static routes using DHCP in unmanaged networks

Machines on unmanaged networks will not receive static routes by DHCP because they do not connect to the Abiquo DHCP Server.

IPv6 networks

Edit Network Information

To edit the Network Information for an unmanaged VLAN, select it in the VLAN list on External page. Then click the edit  button at the top of the NETWORKS list. 

Add IP Addresses

You can add IP addresses of NICs in unmanaged networks for display in Abiquo. These IP addresses are for display only - Abiquo does not allocate them or manage them. You can add display IP addresses during the capture process (using GUI or API) or at any time (using the API).

Screenshot: adding IP addresses during the capture process. First select the unmanaged network with the same VLAN tag as the hypervisor network used by the VM. Then enter the IP address for the VM. As mentioned above, this is for display purposes only. As for all unmanaged networks, you must assign the IP address to the virtual machine outside of the platform.

You cannot add IP addresses for strict IPv6 networks. However, Abiquo retrieves the MAC address from the hypervisor and uses that to generate an IPv6 address for display. The addresses displayed in Abiquo for strict IPv6 networks should be the same as those allocated by the router system.

View the IP List

On the right side of the screen, in the External IPs pane, you will see details of the IPs added for the selected unmanaged VLAN. Click in the header of a column to sort by that column, use the Search button to filter the results by any field and navigate through the pages with the page scroll.

Delete Unmanaged VLANs

To delete an unmanaged VLAN, select it in the VLAN list on the External tab and press the delete button  and the unmanaged VLAN will be deleted.