Working with Cloud Networks

Rackspace Cloud Networks is a virtual "isolated network" product based upon (though not strictly identical to) the OpenStack Quantum project. With Cloud Networks, you can create multiple isolated networks and associate them with new Cloud Servers. (You cannot add an isolated network to an existing Cloud Server at this time, although that feature may be available in the future.)

Since the network is a feature of the Cloud Servers product, you use the Compute::network() method to create a new network, and the Compute::networkList() method to retrieve information about existing networks.

Pseudo-networks

Rackspace has two pseudo-networks called public and private. The public network represents the Internet, while the private network represents the Rackspace internal ServiceNet (an infrastructure network used to facilitate communication within a Rackspace data center). These are called "pseudo-networks" because they are not actually represented in the Quantum component, but have a special representation that you must use if you want to associate your server with them.

The public network is represented by the special UUID 00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000 and the private network by 11111111-1111-1111-1111-111111111111. php-opencloud provides the special constants RAX_PUBLIC and RAX_PRIVATE to make using these networks easier (see Create a server with an isolated network below).

Create a network

A Cloud Network is identified by a label and must be defined with a network CIDR address range. For example, we can create a network used by our backend servers on the 192.168.0.0 network like this:

// assume $compute is our Compute service
$backend = $compute->network();     // new, empty network object
$backend->create(array(
    'label' => 'Backend Network',   // label it
    'cidr' => '192.168.0.0/16'  // this provides the address range
));

The ID of the network is now available in $backend->id.

Delete a network

To delete a network, use the delete() method:

$backend->delete();

Note that you cannot delete a network if there are still servers attached to it.

Listing networks

The Compute::networkList() method returns a Collection of Network objects:

$list = $compute->networkList();
$list->sort('label');
while($network = $list->next())
    printf("%s: %s\n", $network->id, $network->label);

This displays the ID and label of all your available networks (including the public and private pseudo-networks).

Create a server with an isolated network

When you create a new server, you can specify the networks to which it is attached via the networks attribute in the Server::create() method.

• If you create the server without specifying its networks, then it is created using the default public and private networks.
• If you create the server and specify networks, it is created with only the networks that you specify. That is, if you specify networks, then the public and private networks are not attached to the server unless you explicitly include them.

Example:

use OpenCloud\Compute\Constants\Network;

// assuming the $backend network we created above
$server = $compute->server();           // create an empty server object
$server->create(array(
    'name' => 'My Server',
    'flavor' => $compute->flavor(2),
    'image' => $compute->image('c195ef3b-9195-4474-b6f7-16e5bd86acd0'),
    'networks' => array(                // associate our networks
        $backend,
        $compute->network(Network::RAX_PUBLIC))));

In this example, the server $server is attached to the $backend network that we created in the previous example. It is also attached to the Rackspace public network (the Internet). However, it is not attached to the Rackspace private network (ServiceNet).

The networks attribute is an array of Network objects (and not just a UUID of the network). This example will fail:

$server->create(array(
    ...
    'networks' => array(Network::RAX_PUBLIC, Network::RAX_PRIVATE)));

because Network::RAX_PUBLIC and Network::RAX_PRIVATE are UUIDs, not networks. Use the Compute::network() method to convert a UUID into a network:

$server->create(array(
    ...
    'networks' => array($compute->network(Network::RAX_PUBLIC),...)));

What next?

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