What is Floating IP and how to order it?
In this documentation entry, we will discuss in detail what a floating IP actually is and how it can be useful for your business. We are also going to look at how you can order the service using our client area. So without any more waiting, let’s dive right in!
What is a Floating IP exactly?
Simply said, a floating IP is a publicly accessible IP address that can be easily transferred from one of your servers to another in a matter of seconds.
If you are switching between KVM VPS or Dedicated Instances you will be required to reboot the server when you attach to, or detach an IP address from it.
On the other hand, our OpenVZ-based VPS servers do not require such rebooting and can directly apply the changes.
One of the main purposes of using floating IPs is that they can help minimize downtime significantly while also creating a highly available infrastructure. This can happen effortlessly as you can just transfer a given IP address from your main server to your backup server, allowing your business to continue running. This is extremely useful when you have to deal with scheduled or unpredictable downtime, which can be caused by routine maintenance or even hackers that are trying to take your website (or even server) down using DDoS or other types of cyberattacks.
However, as we mentioned in our floating IP announcement, in order for this feature to be utilized fully, you must keep your backup server up to date. This includes having the same configurations, files, data and any other information already present on the server. Testing environments are a good option for such backup servers as developers and designers are constantly making changes in order to check how things would look or work prior to deployment to production.
Overall, if you manage to keep your backup server updated, then you might experience almost no downtime when changing IPs.
How to order a Floating IP?
You can easily order a floating IP through the client area. Simply follow these steps.
Firstly, navigate to the ‘Services’ tab as shown in the following image:
Next, click on the ‘Order Floating IPs’ button, as illustrated below:
Finally, you will need to just fill in the purchase form.
You have to select the number of regular floating IPs and the amount of DDoS-protected floating IPs you would wish to order. In general, the default limit per account is limited to 20 Floating IPs in total. However, this limit can be increased - you just need to submit a new support ticket.
The last thing you need to do is to select a billing period and payment method and then press ‘Continue’.
After your payment has been successfully processed, your new floating IP addresses will be automatically deployed to your account. To manage a floating IP, go the ‘Services’ tab and then navigate to the ‘Floating IPs’ tab, which will look like so:
That's it. If you have any questions regarding operating your floating IPs, you can read through our documentation entry on how to manage your floating IPs.