vCloud Automation Center – vCAC 5.1 – Configure Static IP Address Support

Caution: Articles written for technical not grammatical accuracy, If poor grammar offends you proceed with caution ;-)

vCAC has a feature that can be enabled to provide support for Static IP address assignments of provisioned workloads. This Static IP Address feature allows you to create “Network Profiles” that you assign to your networks from which it assigns IP addresses to machines that are provisioned on to the network. vCAC handles IP address allocation in the following way:

When a machine request is submitted it get placed on the appropriate reservation that is assigned to the group that can support the request.
Once placed on the reservation it get’s assigned to a network. If the network has a “Network Profile” assigned to it the machine will receive the next available IP Address form the “Network Profile. If not no address will be assigned.
As pat of the machine provisioning process you can execute “VMware Customization Specs” that perform the sysprep operation on the provisioned machine. When an IP address is assigned from a “Network Profile” vCAC instructs vCenter to override the customization spec with the IP information assigned to the machine. (When using VMware cloning either customization specifications” or the “vCAC Guest Agent” is required for static IP address assignments.)

Be sure that you have completed the steps in the below posts before configuring Static IP Services:

Watch the video tutorial!

Enabling Static IP Address Support

1. Go to the “vCAC Administrator” menu and select “Customization“. Once on the “Customization” page check the box next to “Enable static IP service” and click “Ok“. This will enable a menu option under “Enterprise Administrator” called “Network Profiles”

Create a Network Profile”

2. Navigate to “Enterprise Administrator” and select “Network Profiles“.

3. On the “Network Profiles” page select “New Network Profile” in the upper right.

4. Give you profile a “Name” and fill in the relevant network information for the network you are creating the profile for. Clcik “Ok” and you will be taken back to the “Network Profiles” page.

Assign an IP Address Range

5. On the “Network Profiles” page hover over the “Network Profile” you created and select “Edit“.

6. One the “Edit Network Profile” page appears select “New Network Range“.

7. Give your network range a “Name” and set the “Starting” and “Ending” IP address. then click “Ok“.

8. You will be brought back to the “Edit Network Profile” page. Here you will see the range you created and the “IP Address” associated with it. Click “Ok”

Add Network Profile to Reservation

9. Next go to “Enterprise Administrator” and select “Reservations“.

10. Select a “Reservation” that has the “Network” assigned to it that you created your “Network Profile” for, hover over it and select “Edit“.

11. In the “Network Section” you will see drop down boxes to the “Networks“. Click the drop down next to the network you want to assign your profile to, and select the “Network Profile” you created. and then click “Ok“.

Your Network Profile is now ready for use. Go head and request a machine that is will be provisioned against the reservation and network that your profile is attached to. Once you make your request navigate to Enterprise Administrator select Network Profiles, and then select the profile you created. You will see your newly requested machine assigned to an IP Address.

Cool Use Case

There is some cool use cases that can be achieved through the use of Network Profiles. One that I want to call out in this article is being able to define network ranges per provisioning group. If you want to have different IP ranges assigned to different groups it’s really easy. Because reservations are assigned to only one group, you can create a Network Profile for each group and assign each one a different range of IP addresses. Then assigned the relevant Network Profile to the respective groups reservations and you have IP pools being assigned to specific groups.

2 Replies to “vCloud Automation Center – vCAC 5.1 – Configure Static IP Address Support”

Great article, thanks!

This function, however, is predicated on the fact that you have to carve out large IP address ranges in order to assign a pool of IP capacity for vCAC to manage.

In a large enterprise (like mine) we do not have the ability to allocate new networks and reserve a large pool of IPs to allow vCAC to do the IP assignment at provisioning time.

Two ways I thought that perhaps vCAC could work in this case is:
1. Programmatically look up the available IPs in a network by querying out enterprise IP tool, and free IPs could be added to a vCAC Network Profile (rather than an IP range).
2. Add a large IP range to vCAC network Profile which already has some IPs allocated by systems outside of vCAC, but programmatically “black-out” particular IPs in a range so vCAC does not try and allocate them.

Are either one of those possible?

The second issue with Network Profiles is that there is no reporting on IP capacity. When you go to Reports / Capacity Usage, there is no report that shows us how many IP addresses we have consumed and are available per Network Profile. We would very much need this information in order to use vCAC to manage IP allocation, as otherwise vCAC may incorrectly inform us that these is capacity to deploy a VM, but in fact there would potentially be no IP address available.

Very cool Blog! Tks!

Dennis says:
July 5, 2013 at 6:05 am
Great article, thanks!
This function, however, is predicated on the fact that you have to carve out large IP address ranges in order to assign a pool of IP capacity for vCAC to manage.
In a large enterprise (like mine) we do not have the ability to allocate new networks and reserve a large pool of IPs to allow vCAC to do the IP assignment at provisioning time.
Two ways I thought that perhaps vCAC could work in this case is:
1. Programmatically look up the available IPs in a network by querying out enterprise IP tool, and free IPs could be added to a vCAC Network Profile (rather than an IP range).
2. Add a large IP range to vCAC network Profile which already has some IPs allocated by systems outside of vCAC, but programmatically “black-out” particular IPs in a range so vCAC does not try and allocate them.
Are either one of those possible?
The second issue with Network Profiles is that there is no reporting on IP capacity. When you go to Reports / Capacity Usage, there is no report that shows us how many IP addresses we have consumed and are available per Network Profile. We would very much need this information in order to use vCAC to manage IP allocation, as otherwise vCAC may incorrectly inform us that these is capacity to deploy a VM, but in fact there would potentially be no IP address available.
Alex says:
September 26, 2013 at 7:07 pm
Very cool Blog! Tks!