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Bring your own subnet

Bring your own subnet

You can bring your own IPv4 address ranges (public and private) from your on-premises deployment to your IBM Cloud® Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) by creating address prefixes. You can then create subnets within these IP ranges.

Each zone of your VPC is assigned a default address prefix, which specifies the address range in which subnets can be created. If the default address scheme does not suit your requirements, you can customize the address prefixes.

When a new VPC is created, the default address prefixes are assigned to each zone in the region, as shown in the following table.

Address prefixes assigned to a zone in a region
Region name Zone Address prefix
Dallas us-south-1 10.240.0.0/18
Dallas us-south-2 10.240.64.0/18
Dallas us-south-3 10.240.128.0/18
Washington DC us-east-1 10.241.0.0/18
Washington DC us-east-2 10.241.64.0/18
Washington DC us-east-3 10.241.128.0/18
London eu-gb-1 10.242.0.0/18
London eu-gb-2 10.242.64.0/18
London eu-gb-3 10.242.128.0/18
Frankfurt eu-de-1 10.243.0.0/18
Frankfurt eu-de-2 10.243.64.0/18
Frankfurt eu-de-3 10.243.128.0/18
Madrid eu-es-1 10.251.0.0/18
Madrid eu-es-2 10.251.64.0/18
Madrid eu-es-3 10.251.128.0/18
Tokyo jp-tok-1 10.244.0.0/18
Tokyo jp-tok-2 10.244.64.0/18
Tokyo jp-tok-3 10.244.128.0/18
Sydney au-syd-1 10.245.0.0/18
Sydney au-syd-2 10.245.64.0/18
Sydney au-syd-3 10.245.128.0/18
Osaka jp-osa-1 10.248.0.0/18
Osaka jp-osa-2 10.248.64.0/18
Osaka jp-osa-3 10.248.128.0/18
Toronto ca-tor-1 10.249.0.0/18
Toronto ca-tor-2 10.249.64.0/18
Toronto ca-tor-3 10.249.128.0/18
Sao Paulo br-sao-1 10.250.0.0/18
Sao Paulo br-sao-2 10.250.64.0/18
Sao Paulo br-sao-3 10.250.128.0/18

For x86-64 dedicated host profiles, the Madrid region only supports dedicated host profiles with instance storage. For more information, see Dedicated host profiles.

If you don't want these default address prefixes, you can choose to not assign them when you create your VPC. For example, add the "address_prefix_management": "manual" parameter when you create the VPC by using the API.

To bring your own subnets:

  1. Create a VPC.
  2. For each zone in which you plan to create subnets, create one or more address prefixes.
  3. When you create subnets in each zone, specify IP ranges that are within one of the address prefixes that you created for that zone.

If you use an IP range outside of those ranges RFC 1918 (10.0.0.0/8, 172.16.0.0/12, or 192.168.0.0/16) defined for a subnet, the instances that you attach to that subnet might be unable to reach parts of the public internet. If you plan to configure VPCs that use both non-RFC-1918 addresses and also have public connectivity (floating IPs or public gateways), make sure to use a custom route that contains the Delegate-VPC action.

Address prefixes and the IBM Cloud console

When you create a VPC by using the IBM Cloud console, the system selects your address prefixes automatically and requires you to create subnets within the default prefixes. If this address scheme does not suit your requirements, you can clear the Default address prefixes option to not assign default address prefixes to each zone in your VPC. After you create your VPC, go to its details page and set your own address prefixes. Then, you can create subnets within the address prefixes you specified.

CLI example

The following example shows you how to use the CLI to bring your own IP addresses for subnets in the 'us-south-1' and 'us-south-2' zones of your VPC.

  1. Create an address prefix named my-first-prefix in the us-south-1 zone:

    ibmcloud is vpc-address-prefix-create my-first-prefix $VPC us-south-1 172.16.0.0/23
    
  2. Create an address prefix named another-prefix in the us-south-2 zone:

    ibmcloud is vpc-address-prefix-create another-prefix $VPC us-south-2 172.16.2.0/23
    
  3. Create a subnet named my-subnet within your new address prefix in the us-south-1 zone:

    ibmcloud is subnet-create my-subnet $vpc us-south-1 --ipv4-cidr-block "172.16.0.0/25"
    
  4. Create a subnet named another-subnet within your new address prefix in the us-south-2 zone:

    ibmcloud is subnet-create another-subnet $vpc us-south-2 --ipv4-cidr-block "172.16.2.0/25"