Networks¶
General concept¶
A network in Binero cloud is a software-defined virtual network.
The network will connect to ports on routers or instances just as a physical server might connect to a port in a switch.
Networks, therefore, are the carriers of network traffic in your infrastructure and would normally terminate in a router (for routing to another network or the internet) or an instance.
Networks are what connects the infrastructure together. Assuming you want to use only manual IP assignments on your infrastructure, creating networks and ports would be enough.
The subnets will however enable lost of automation and additional features in the platform and is the recommended approach for setting up IP configuration on networks.
When referring to the standard OSI model for networking, a network is equal to layer 2, a subnet is layer 3.
Note
While a network would be enough (provided you would want to manage your IP layer manually, its recommended to use the OpenStack approach to networking which is to use networks that in turn have subnets configured on them as it greatly improves the user experience and some services in the platform will rely on doing so.
Managing networks¶
You are able to manage networks using either of the below tools.
The cloud management portal is recommended and will get a user with limited prior knowledge from A to B quickly. The tradeoff is that advanced features are not always available.
OpenStack Horizon is the web interface included in OpenStack. Some advanced features might only have a GUI implementation here.
OpenStack terminal client is a command line implementation giving terminal oriented users a quick way to access the cloud. The learning curve is steeper than the GUI implementation but the workflow will be efficient.