New feature announced: Floating IPs. What is Floating IP?
After a lot of hard work by our developer team, we are more than happy to announce that a new feature is now available and ready to be used by our clients - floating IPs. The functionality has been fully tested and it is now officially in production.
What is a Floating IP?
The floating IP service allows you to purchase additional IP addresses as a separate service, fully independent from a given server. The service has its own billing, seperate orders, etc. But why would I buy other completely different IP addresses as an addon if I already have a server?
Simply put, a floating IP address can be easily attached to a server and then remapped between other servers. This can be incredibly useful, as it can help develop a failover mechanism, which can in turn be utilized to build a highly available infrastructure. In other words, it is a fantastic alternative to have, which can save you when it comes to unpredicted or unexpected downtime. Consequently, this can also provide you with more sales and better search performance!
When is it useful to have a Floating IP?
Let’s say that you have 2 servers with 2 additional IP addresses. Before the floating IP service, it was hard to remap IP addresses between multiple VPS or VDS services. Now, it can be done instantly with just a few clicks. The biggest benefit of this service is that if you encounter any hardware or software glitches with your production server, you can easily remap your IP address to a backup server. This will result in almost zero downtime, saving you time, effort and in some cases - money, along the way.
The key element here is, however, to always keep your backup server up to date. This means that you have to duplicate the information from the master server to it so that you can quickly respond should something happen to the master machine. Switching to the new, backup server with it having all files and configurations already there, is essentially what is going to protect your service.
How much does the service cost?
The price for 1 floating IP is 2.50 EUR/month excluding VAT. The price for one DDoS-protected floating IP address is 10 EUR/month excluding VAT.
How can I order Floating IPs?
There are 2 separate ways in which you can order this service. Method number one involves selecting the number of floating IPs that you would like to have when you are configuring a new server order. However, if you are unsure about whether you will be using this feature at checkout, there is also another alternative.
The second method is to order floating IPs through the client area. You can find a tutorial on how to order floating IPs in our documentation. In short, you need to navigate to the services tab and then click on the ‘Order Floating IPs’ button. After that, you will be required to fill in the given form and to proceed to payment.
After paying successfully, your new floating IP address(es) will be automatically added to your account, allowing you to manage them as you like. For more information on floating IP and server management, you can have a look through our documentation entry on how to manage floating IPs.