IP Pool is a location within which IP addresses are managed. When you are given IPs, you are able to pass them down to resellers and customers or utilize them within your own servers or services. IPs may be granted as either:
- exclusive, meaning that the target subscriber becomes the user with exclusive rights to this IP, or
- shared, meaning that this IP is shared among many subscribers (for example, in the case of name-based hosting, one IP is used by many users).
When a subscriber needs to use some resource demanding IP address, they use the IP address along with this resource. For example, it is meaningless for a service installed on one hardware node to use an IP address configured on different hardware nodes.
IP addresses may be attached to a hardware node as separate shared IP addresses, or as an IP pool. There are also different ways to establish a connection between the hardware node and an IP pool: attach (IP pool) and bind (network).
An IP address cannot be used in CloudBlue Commerce until it is configured and attached to the hardware node. One of the ways to configure an IP on the hardware node is attaching an IP pool to the hardware node. By doing this, you limit the range of IP addresses that can be used on this hardware node by your subscribers.
The other way to configuring IP usage at the hardware node is binding. By binding the IP pool to the hardware node, you define which IP addresses (grouped in the IP pool) are routed to the hardware node and will work on the given hardware node. Similarly, an application may require a designated IP address, but in this case, the IP address will not be associated with any specific network interface. Such applications contain an IP address in version requirements (see the CloudBlue Commerce Application Hosting Guide, Application Hosting > Managing Applications > Reviewing Application Requirements section).
The IP pool also provides the mechanism by which IP usage can be tracked. You can immediately see the complete list of IPs along with the locations where each IP is currently being used.