Virtual Local Area Networks on Cloud platform at Gandi

What is a VLAN?

VLANs (Virtual Local Area Network) are virtual networks. They allow you to let your servers communicate in a “partitioned” way, on a dedicated network. At Gandi, you can create one or several VLANs, and associate privates interfaces with them that you link to your servers. Only interfaces linked on the same network can communicate.

Advantages:

  • More secure: Interfaces are private. They are not available externally.

  • Faster: A private interface’s maximal traffic speed is 200 Mbits/s (100 Mbits/s for a public interface).

This will let you create servers clusters, for example, without needing the purchase of additional bandwidth or using public interfaces. This can provide secure communication between a front server (website) and a backend server (such as a database).

Set Up a Vlan

You need to have at least 2 servers, in the same datacenter to be able to install a VLAN.

  1. Log in your Gandi account, and click on “Cloud” in the left menu.

  2. Click on the “Private Networks” tab.

  3. Click on “Create a Network”.

  4. On the following page, choose a name for your network and define a network and a submask using the CIDR Format (for example : 10.0.0.0/29).

  5. Specify a bridge in the range defined above (for example : 10.0.0.1).

  6. On the following page, attach at least two servers. Click on the button Add a server/IP and choose a server in the list provided in the dropdown menu. Add an IP address from the range defined previously, and that is not yet attributed.

  7. Add the other server(s).

Then log in on one of the servers of the VLAN via SSH, to verify the availability of the other servers at their assigned IP addresses.

Note

You can create up to 128 VLANs for all your servers, and each can contain 64 interfaces.

Warning

VLANs can’t communicate between different datacenters. For example, a server in a French datacenter can’t be linked to a server hosted in Luxembourg.

VLANs Management

To manage an existing VLAN, follow these steps.

  1. From the “CLOUD” section, click on “Private Networks”.

  2. Select the VLAN you want to manage by clicking on its name or on the arrow to its right.

#. On this page you can : - Attach an additional server - Detach a server by clicking on the “unlink” icon (a crossed out chain). - Delete the entire Private Network.

Warning

To be able to delete a VLAN all related servers should first be detached.