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Using the Private IP Address on your Cloud Server

  • Article ID: 149
  • Last updated on August 14, 2012
  • Authored by: Rackspace Support
  • (6 Comments)

Each Cloud Server comes with two addresses that are available for your use. One address is an external ”real-world” IP address that is accessible from the Internet and the other is an internal or "private" IP address.  This internal IP address is on a network commonly called ServiceNet and is used within the Cloud.

Why do Cloud Servers have an Internal IP Address?

This IP address is an internal address that is only accessible by the Cloud Server platforms because it allows you to transfer data between Cloud Servers with no bandwidth charges.

Is ServiceNet Free?

Yes! This is a standard service that is offered with each Cloud Server at no additional cost. Your Cloud Server is pre-configured with your private IP address as soon as it is built.

How Do I Find My Private IP Address?

If you log into your Cloud Server, via SSH or the Console, you can type the command ifconfig eth1on most distributions to find your private IP address. Then look for the inet addrline. A sample output is posted here:

    # ifconfig eth1
    eth1      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:18:78:56:34:12 
    ; inet addr:10.1.98.200  Bcast:10.1.98.255  Mask:255.255.255.0

**** You will need the address on the second line next to 'inet addr:'.

What can I use the private address for?

The private IP address has many uses:

  • High-availability Heartbeat
  • Load balancing
  • Remote database connections
  • NFS/rsync
  • Remote backup

As you can see, the possibilities are endless!



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6 Comments

everytime i go to chatroom owners pick up my ip then virus into my comput er so i need cloud ip address so the owner did not know where real ip thank you
By Anonymous on Aug. 6, 2012

I think you might misunderstand. The "private IP address" refers to a network interface on our Cloud products that is accessible only by other Cloud products in the same region. I'm afraid the private IP address does not refer to an address you can assign to your desktop to prevent it from being displayed when you connect to a chatroom.

I recommend looking into some good anti-virus software (there are some solid free offerings out there now) as well as ensuring your computer keeps a firewall up to block incoming traffic.
By jered.heeschen on Aug. 7, 2012

Hi,
Can I remove the public address to form my own private cloud? The plan is to have one "gateway" box running openvpn and some firewall rules and all internal servers with only internal addresses. I couldn't see a way to do that from the console. I could "ifconfig eth0 down" but that doesn't stop a "user" bringing it back up again.

Can I force a server to use a specific private address at install time? Then I can snapshot and terminate an instance and bring it up with the same address and the same rules apply. Or define my own subnets within my private range and keep certain servers within those subnets (e.g. 10.1.98.0-16 backend, 17-32 dmz, 32-48 front end)
By Max Allan on Aug. 13, 2012

You can disable the network interface, as you mention. The network configuration and scripts can differ between distributions, but I would think you should be able to remove the config from there to prevent users from bringing up eth0. You could also leave the config intact and make sure the permissions on ifconfig and ifup are such that only a superuser can run them.

While you can try assigning another IP address to a server's private network interface, I don't think there's any guarantee that the servers within the same datacenter would be able to talk to each other using the nonstandard IP addresses.
By jered.heeschen on Aug. 14, 2012

Do you have a name server for these internal addresses or do most customers just manually keep the hosts files on their group of machines in sync?
By Carl Edwards on May. 29, 2013

Our DNS servers do not assign names to the addresses on the private network, so I'd suggest either modifying hosts files as you suggest or adding them to the DNS for a domain you control (if you don't mind the private network addresses being made public).
By jered.heeschen on May. 29, 2013

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