Infrastructure resources can be exposed to the Internet via their own public IP addresses. For services created on such an infrastructure, it is however not recommended to use these IP addresses to expose services themselves.
When a service should be optimized for scalability or agility, its public IP address should not be linked to a particular server or virtual machine. For such cases, separate reserved IP addresses are the best way to make services publicly available.
In the Public Cloud universe, you can use either Additional IP (previously labeled as Failover IP) or Floating IP to achieve this.
Both services provide a flexible way to manage public access to your services. They are not dependent on infrastructure and can be scaled up or migrated whenever needed.
Public Cloud IP concepts
Additional IP (previously labelled as Failover IP)
This type of public IP address is available for services of all relevant OVHcloud universes: Bare Metal Cloud (for bare metal servers), Public Cloud (with OpenStack), or Hosted Private Cloud (with VMware or Nutanix for example).
They are designed to be used in cross-product scenarios, for example in failover operations or hybrid cloud use cases. They are billed on a monthly basis.
Once an Additional IP address is available in your Control Panel, it can be attached/detached or moved between servers and Public Cloud instances. Manual changes may be needed on the backend side to apply new IP configurations.
Please note that in the Public Cloud universe, Additional IP can only be used with instances in the Public Mode of networking (having public IPs in the external network).
More information about configuring Additional IP addresses is available in this guide.
Floating IP
This type of public IP address is only available for Public Cloud services, designed for cloud-native use cases and especially automation (e.g. Terraform, Ansible). They serve to expose a private instance or a private network service (Load Balancer for example) to the public network.
The backend (instance/Load Balancer) system configuration when using Floating IP is entirely automatic (via DHCP protocol), no manual setup is needed. However, they require a Gateway in order to map a public IP address to an instance or network service.
Please note that Floating IP can only be used with instances in the Private Mode of networking (within a specific private network inside a given region).
Floating IP is billed hourly on a pay-as-you-go basis.
More information about configuring Floating IP is available in the Public Cloud Networking Concepts guide.
How to obtain public IP addresses in the OVHcloud Control Panel
In the OVHcloud Control Panel, open the Public Cloud section and select Public IPs. Here you can manage Floating IP and Additional IP addresses according to your needs.
Depending on your choice, you can select from the different regions and further configuration options are available.
Go further
For more information and tutorials, please see our other Public Cloud Networking support guides or explore the guides for other OVHcloud products and services.