Routed IPs are coming to all Scaleway Products

Paris, France - Wednesday, March 20, 2024 - Scaleway is changing the Public IP behavior from a NAT IP to a Routed IP one


Scaleway’s choice to ensure growth was to implement a highly available NAT (Network Address Translation) to make IP addresses move between physical machines with the Instances to which they were assigned.

We will be removing the NAT to create a simpler way to handle the network. The planned changes will bring several improvements for our users, among support for IPv6, and enhanced security.

If you want to know more about the changes behind this evolution, take a look at our blog post

Routed IPs vs NAT IPs

In the past, whenever a Scaleway Instance was deployed, it was assigned an internal private IP address, along with a public IP address that was routed to it via a carrier-grade NAT (Network Address Translation) solution. However, this setup posed some challenges. For example, if the hypervisor hosting the Instance was changed, say after a stop/start procedure, the private IP would also change , which could disrupt internal communications.

With the “routed IP” feature, we are able to route public IP addresses directly to an Instance, without having to go through a NAT gateway to convert the public IP into a private IP. This way, your Instance can be accessed directly from the internet via its routed flexible IP address, maintaining IP consistency even if the Instance is restarted or the hypervisor is changed.

This networking method, which supports both IPv4 and IPv6, allows multiple flexible IPs to be assigned to a single Instance. It is the preferred network configuration mode for all compatible Instance types however, keep in mind that as the IPs are now mounted within the Instances, whenever you want to change an IP on a running instance, you have to perform manual operations to update the network configuration.

Migration plan

All Scaleway products will migrate from NAT IP to a Routed IP. This migration process involves two scenarios:

Manual migration

Certain products will offer users the option of manual migration. The goal is to enable users to check the potential impact of the IP stack change on their current operations and determine the optimal time to execute the migration. The following products will support manual migrations:

• Kapsule & Kosmos: clients can migrate by manual action from June 3 2024 to September 30 2024 (tutorial)
• Public Gateway: clients can migrate by manual action from April to May 2024.
• Instances: clients can migrate by manual action until Q2 2024 (tutorial).
  

Note 1: We strongly recommend that you migrate your Instances yourself to avoid any issues that might arise during the automatic migration (next section).

Note 2: make sure a DHCP client is properly configured on your public network interface (in most cases ens2 or eth0). If static network configurations are used during migration, there's a risk of losing internet connectivity, therefore it is advisable to use DHCP instead. Before initiating the migration, it's necessary to update the 'scaleway-ecosystem' and 'cloud-init' packages to their latest releases. Please check "How to safely migrate to IP Mobility" in your product documentation.

Automatic migration

Scaleway will handle the migration of managed products to the new routed IP stack for all existing customers. Migration schedule will be communicated as a planned maintenance as usual in 2024. The following products will benefit from automatic migrations:

• Managed Databases (RDB & Redis)
• Load Balancer
• Public Gateway
• Web Hosting
• Kapsule & Kosmos
• Instances
  

Any questions? Just ask your Scaleway representative, or request support via the console. We're here to help!