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Adding IPv6 Blocks

SolusVM 2 servers can have either IPv4 addresses or IPv4 and IPv6 addresses. In the latter case, you need to add both IPv4 and IPv6 blocks and assign them to a compute resource.

Adding an IPv6 block may be a bit trickier than adding an IPv4 one. For this reason, we cover the procedure here and not the in the Quick Start guide.

To add an IPv6 block:

  1. Get a range of IPv6 addresses. You usually get them from your hosting provider in tandem with servers for future compute resources.
  2. Go to Network and click Add IP Block.
  3. Give your IP block a name.
  4. Specify the following settings:

    • IPv6 range
    • Subnet

      Specify the subnet to divide the IPv6 range into smaller network subdivisions. For example, if you got the IP range that has the /64 prefix, the subnet accepts the values between 64 and 128. The higher the subnet value is, the smaller a network subdivision is. The maximum subnet value is 128, which means the IP block can allocate 2 to the power of 64 IPv6 addresses (the smallest subdivision).

    • Gateway

      Some hosing providers show the gateway, while some don’t. You have two ways to find the gateway if you don’t see one. You can contact you hosting provider support or you can connect to the server by SSH and run the following command:

      ip -6 r | grep default
      

      Note

      All servers that you got from your hosting provider may have one gateway or each server may have its own gateway.

    • IPv6 primary and secondary DNS servers

      You can use public name servers (for example, Google ones) or those that belong to hosting providers (for example, OpenDNS, Cloudflare, and so on).

  5. Select one or more compute resources to assign the IP block to. Remember that the compute resource must also have an assigned IPv4 block.

  6. Click Save.

    Note

    When you’ve assigned IPv4 and IPv6 blocks to a compute resource, created servers will have IPv4 and IPv6 addresses picked randomly from both blocks. If the IPv4 block is used up, SolusVM 2 will no longer be able to create servers using this compute resource. (even if the IPv6 block still has spare addresses).

SolusVM 2 automatically checks if the added IPv6 block works for the connected compute resource. To see the result of the check, go to Compute Resources and click the compute resource's name.

To carry out the check, SolusVM 2 pings the gateway every minute. The purpose is to find any global IPv6 gateway in the network interface of the compute resource.

If the check fails, you’ll see “IPv6 isn’t available”. To troubleshoot this issue, you need to check if the compute resource has IPv6 configured. Certain providers don’t have IPv6 available and configured by default.

To troubleshoot unavailable IPv6 on a compute resource:

  1. Connect to the server of your compute resource by SSH.
  2. Check if the server has IPv6 configured by running:

    ip -6 a
    

    or by checking the network configuration files:

    • (Ubuntu 18 and 20) /etc/netplan/
    • (Debian 10) /etc/network/interfaces

    If IPv6 is not configured on the server, configure IPv6 manually.

  3. Check if IPv6 now works by running the following command:

    ping 6 google.com
    

    If the ping succeeds, IPv6 now works. If the ping still fails, check if the gateway is correct (one you specified when adding the IPv6 block). You can also check /var/log/messages (CentOS) or /var/log/syslog (Debian, Ubuntu). The logs will contain the information about all failed ping attempts.

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