Configure a network and network profile to use external IPAM for an existing network in VMware Aria Automation

You can define an existing network to use IP address values that are obtained from, and managed by, an external IPAM provider rather than internally from VMware Aria Automation.

You can define a network to access existing IP settings that you have defined in your organization's external IPAM provider account. This step expands on the Infoblox provider integration that you created in the previous step.

In this example, you configure a network profile with existing networks that were data-collected from vCenter. You then configure these networks to obtain IP information from an external IPAM provider, in this case Infoblox. Virtual machines that you provision from VMware Aria Automation that can be matched with this network profile obtain their IP and other TCP/IP related settings from the external IPAM provider.

For more information about networks, see Network resources in VMware Aria Automation. For more information about network profiles, see How to add network profiles in VMware Aria Automation and Learn more about network profiles in VMware Aria Automation.

For related information, see How do I configure a network profile to support an on-demand network for an external IPAM integration in VMware Aria Automation.

Prerequisites

This sequence of steps is shown in the context of an IPAM provider integration workflow. See Tutorial: Configuring a provider-specific external IPAM integration for VMware Aria Automation.

• Verify that you have cloud administrator credentials. See Credentials required for working with cloud accounts in VMware Aria Automation.
• Verify that you have the cloud administrator user role. See What are the VMware Aria Automation user roles.
• Verify that you have an account with the external IPAM provider, for example Infoblox or Bluecat, and that you have the correct access credentials to your organization's account with the IPAM provider. In this example workflow, the IPAM provider is Infoblox.
• Verify that you have an IPAM integration point for the IPAM provider. See Add an external IPAM integration for Infoblox in VMware Aria Automation.

Procedure

1. To configure a network, click Infrastructure > Resources > Networks.
2. On the Networks tab, select an existing network to use with the IPAM provider integration point. In this example, the network name is net.23.117-only-IPAM.

   Listed networks have been data-collected by VMware Aria Automation from a vCenter in your organization.

3. To obtain values from the external IPAM provider, verify that except for the Account/region, Name, and Network domain, all other network settings are empty, including the following:
   • Domain (See Note in step 8)
   • CIDR
   • Default gateway
   • DNS servers
   • DNS search domains
4. Click the IP Ranges tab and click Add IPAM IP Range.
5. From the Network menu, select the network that you just configured, for example net.23.117-only-IPAM.
6. From the Provider menu, select the Infloblox_Integration IPAM integration point that you created earlier in the workflow
7. From the now-visible Address Space drop-down menu, select one of the listed network views.

   An address space in Infoblox is referred to as a network view.

   The network views are obtained from your IPAM provider account. This example uses the network subnet that you just configured, for example net.23.117-only-IPAM, the Infloblox_Integration integration point that you created earlier in the workflow, and an address space named default.

   Listed address space values are obtained from the external IPAM provider.

8. From the list of displayed networks that are available for the selected address space, select one or more networks, for example select 10.23.117.0/24.

   For this example, the Domains and DNS Servers column values for the selected network contain values from Infoblox.

   Note: If you select a network in step 3 that had a domain specified for VMware Aria Automation, and then select a network from the external IPAM provider address space that contains a domain value, the domain value in the external IPAM provider network takes precedence over the domain specified in VMware Aria Automation. If the IPAM IP range setting doesn't have a domain value, specified in either Automation Assembler or in the external IPAM provider, provisioning fails.

   For Infoblox, you can use the blueprint property Infoblox.IPAM.Network.dnsSuffix at the machine level to overwrite the domain value. For related information, see Using Infoblox-specific properties and extensible attributes for IPAM integrations in VMware Aria Automation cloud templates.

9. Click Add to save the IPAM IP range for the network.
   The range is visible in the IP Ranges table.
10. Click the IP Addresses tab.
    After you provision a machine by using the new address range from the external IPAM provider, a new record will be visible in the IP Addresses table.
11. To configure a network profile to use the network, click Infrastructure > Configure > Network Profiles.
12. Name the network profile, for example Infoblox-NP, and add the following sample settings.
    • Summary tab:
      • Specify a vSphere cloud account/region.
      • Add a capability tag for the network profile, for example named infoblox_abx.

        Make note of the capability tag, as you must also use it as a cloud template constraint tag to make the provisioning association in the cloud template.

    • Networks tab:
      • Add the network that you created earlier, for example net.23.117-only-IPAM.
13. Click Save to save the network profile with these settings.

Results

The network and network profile setting are now configured for an existing network type to be used for the Infoblox IPAM integration in a cloud template.