Documentation
Addresses and network
Provibr keeps track of the addresses you hand out: which prefix they come from, which machine has them, and which are free. The network pages next to it record what your switches and cabling look like. This page covers both, including where the second one stops.
The address model
- Prefix
- A block you own, written in CIDR notation, with its gateway, the range inside it that may actually be handed out, and the resolvers to configure. Prefixes from a /8 down to a /30 are accepted; a /31 or /32 is refused because there is no usable address to hand out.
- Group
- Several prefixes that serve the same purpose, for example everything public in one location. A plan can point at a group and let the platform pick a prefix inside it.
- Pool
- Whatever a plan points at, group or single prefix. A single prefix is a perfectly good pool on its own; grouping is for when you have several blocks that are interchangeable.
- Allocation
- One address handed to one machine. It stays on record after it is released, so you can still see who had an address last month.
How an address reaches a machine
- A plan carries the machine specification and the pool to draw from.
- Creating a server takes the next free address from that pool and records the allocation.
- The address, its gateway and the resolvers go into the machine's cloud-init configuration as it is created.
- When the machine is gone the allocation is released, and the address can be handed out again.
Assigning by hand
On a server's network tab you can take an address from a pool or pin a specific one, and release an address again. Both are useful when you are migrating machines in, or when a customer needs a particular address.
Seeing what you have
The address management section shows occupancy per prefix with the next free address, every active allocation across your prefixes, and the history of released ones. Assignments and releases also appear in the activity log, so a change is never invisible.
Which providers assign addresses
Only where the platform actually decides. On a hypervisor Provibr picks the address and writes it into the machine. A control panel picks the account's address from its own pool, and a game panel hands out its own port allocations, so neither has an address tab. An address management that claimed otherwise would be lying to you.
Network devices
Alongside the addresses you can record your switches and routers, the fabrics they belong to, their ports and the cables between them, and which port a server hangs off.
It is recorded anyway because the topology is worth having written down in the same place as the addresses, and because it is the shape the automation will need when the drivers exist. What is there today is a register, not a controller.
A network device is not a resource. It does not count towards your licence limit, no capacity is sold for it, and it never appears in your server list.
Topology
The topology page draws what you have as a graph: agents, the integrations under them and the servers under those. Where network devices are switched on, the recorded devices and port bindings join the picture. It is a view and nothing more: nothing on it can be changed.
Current limits
- IPv4 only for now. Addresses are stored as text rather than as a numeric type precisely so that IPv6 can be added later without a migration, and an IPv6 prefix is recognised and refused today rather than quietly misread.
- VLAN pools exist next to the address pools, but they need both the automatic allocation feature and the network feature switched on, because a VLAN number only means something inside a fabric.