Automatic IP allocation for network load balancers

[augustodsgv]

Is there an existing issue for this?

• There is no existing issue for this feature

What are you currently unable to do

Hello!

I've been using network load balancers on Incus and one thing that caught my attention is the necessity of defining a listen_address IP manually. I wonder if there is a way to implement an automatic IP allocation, that would take care of allocating free IPs from the uplink network and attach it to the lb.

I think this feature would make the use of load balancers easier, because it would save some time looking for free IPs. Also, it would prevent concurrency issues when two lbs are created at the same time with the same address, either by users or by other systems.

What do you think would need to be added

No response

[stgraber]

Marking as a maybe as things aren't quite that simple sadly:

• We don't really know what network the user may want an IP address from. It could be from the uplink (but that's not allowed in restricted projects), it could be from an additional range of routed IP addresses that they have access to in their project, or it could be using an IP address from the virtual network itself
• We don't know what address family the user wants (IPv4 vs IPv6)

So it certainly wouldn't be as simple as just an auto placeholder for the address, we need extra data from the user and then not all allocations will be allowed in all environments.

[leomylonas]

This is definitely something I'd be interested in too. My use case is for private cloud. I'm provisioning projects (like a tenancy) and user accounts. The tenant shouldn't need to know subnets, routes, and available IPs just to provision an LB - that's infrastructure operational information. Totally understand where you're coming from @stgraber re the many different options. My use case would be solved by having a simple load balancer range on the uplink similar to ipv4.ovn.ranges. (This range may be within the uplink subnet, or on a routed subnet - either way, shouldn't matter). To me, it's role here is just basic IPAM. Project restrictions would still apply of course.