By utilizing vRack, our VLAN (Virtual LAN) technology, you can route traffic privately between your OVHcloud services. In this article, we will cover setting up a subinterface in Windows Server 2016.
Prerequisites
Topics
- Creating a Subinterface in Windows Server 2016
Note: Game Servers do not come with a private NIC and, therefore, cannot utilize vRack.
Creating a Subinterface in Windows Server 2016
In order to create a subinterface in Windows Server 2016, we will need to utilize NIC Teaming. To start, open up the Server Manager Desktop application by clicking the magnifying glass in the bottom-left corner and searching it.
From the Server Manager application, select the Local Server tab and click on Disabled next to NIC Teaming.
This will open the NIC Teaming pop-up. From here, select the TASKS drop-down under "TEAMS" and select New Team.
On the New team pop-up, create a "Team name:" identifying your VLAN. Next, select Ethernet 2, our private ethernet interface, and click OK.
Give the new NIC team a moment to come online and be active. Once active, on the NIC Teaming page, select the Team Interfaces tab under "ADAPTERS AND INTERFACES" and double-click on your new team interface.
This will open the adapter properties where we are able to specify our VLAN ID. Type in your VLAN ID and click OK.
Note: The 99 denotes the VLAN ID we have chosen, this is used to tag traffic. You can choose any VLAN ID between 2 and 4000, however, any servers you wish to privately connect together must use the same VLAN ID.
Back on our Local Server tab on our Server Manager application, you will see that Ethernet 2 is now labeled as our VLAN. Select the IPv4 address assigned by DHCP, IPv6 enabled button next to the VLAN.
On the new Network Connections page, double click on your subinterface VLAN. Once open, select the Properties button and double click on Internet Protocol Version 4 (TCP/IPv4).
On this new pop-up, select Use the following IP address:, select ok when finished entering in your IP address and subnet mask.
Note: Any server connected to vRack with a private IP address (in the following ranges: 10.0.0.0/8, 172.16.0.0/12, or 192.168.0.0/16), on the same subnet, and using the same VLAN ID will be able to connect over vRack. In our example, we are using 192.168.0.0/16 (Subnet mask: 255.255.0.0).
Repeat these steps on the other server(s) using Windows 2016 with a different IP address but within the same subnet (e.g., if you used our example, any IP between 192.168.0.1-192.168.255.254).
After completing this, ping one server from another using the private IP address to verify that the servers are successfully connected via vRack.
Conclusion
Utilizing vRack is an excellent way to securely and efficiently connect OVHcloud services. After completing this article, you should know how to connect multiple Dedicated Servers via vRack.