IP Address Management

IP Address Management covers networking of the internal and external services in the Site Planner model.

The following object types describe the core elements of IP Address Management in Site Planner. Each object type can be managed through the UI and can be found under the IPAM menu. APIs to manage the objects are in the /api/v1/site-planner path. For information about other API paths that you can use, see Using the Site Planner API.

Prefixes

A prefix is an IPv4 or IPv6 network and mask that is expressed in CIDR notation (for example, 192.0.2.0/24).

All bits in a prefix address that are not covered by the mask must be 0. Prefixes can be assigned to sites, VRFs, and VLANs.

A prefix can be assigned to a VLAN, which can be associated to many prefixes. Assigned prefixes can be useful for associating address space with layer two domains.

Prefixes can be marked as pools, which allow the Site Planner to treat them as a range of assignable IP addresses. If the prefix is not a pool, then the Site Planner assumes that the first and last address within the prefix is unusable as they represent the broadcast address.

Roles

Describes the function of a Prefix or VLAN.

Aggregates

In many cases, you might be interested only in a subset of the total IP space in use at your data center. In this case, you can define aggregates to model this behavior. Each aggregate typically corresponds to an allocation of IP space. An RIR can be associated to an aggregate to represent the public organization that grants the IP space or the private authority, such as RFC 1918.

RIRs

RIRs allocate globally routable address space.

IP addresses

IP addresses consist of a IPv4 or IPv6 address with a subnet mask. IP addresses can be assigned to VRFs or appear in the global table.

IP addresses have a functional role to describe their purpose.

  • Loopback
  • Secondary
  • Anycast
  • VIP
  • VRRP
  • HSRP
  • GLBP
  • CARP

IP addresses can be assigned to interfaces on devices and virtual machines.

VRFs

Virtual Routing and Forwarding (VRF) act as routing tables that are used to separate groups from one another in a data center or route overlapping address space. VRFs can be assigned to a tenant to organize the available IP space by customer or user.

The name of a VRF is typically expressed in the form that is prescribed in RFC 4364.

IP addresses and Prefixes can be assigned to one VRF.

VLANs

Represent an isolated layer two domains.

VLANs must be assigned one of the following operational statuses.

  • Active
  • Reserved
  • Deprecated

VLANs might be assigned a functional role. The roles are the same as the roles defined for Prefixes.

VLAN Groups

Used to organize VLANs. Uniqueness is enforced within the group, meaning each assigned VLAN must have a unique ID and name. VLANs that are not registered to a group might have duplicate IDs or names.

Services

Represents a TCP or UDP service that is running on a piece of infrastructure, such as a device or virtual machine. Each service includes a name, protocol, and port number.

If a Service is not bound to one or more IP addresses from its parent, it is assumed to be reachable by way of any of the parents assigned addresses.

External Services

An externally managed service that is relevant to the Site plan. For example, it can be a service that is hosting images or a service that is used to manage aspects of the Site, such as an infrastructure manager of Devices.

Note: The External Service API is on a different subpath: /api/v1/site-planner/ui/plugins/nfvi-management/external-services/

Route targets

A route target is a specific type of extended BGP community that is used to control the redistribution of advertised prefixes among virtual routing and forwarding (VRF) instances. Route targets support modeling L3VPN route targets.

The name of a route target is typically expressed in the form prescribed in RFC 4364. You can assign tenants and tags to each route target.