Working with Network Profiles

You use the IaaS proxy provider service and IPAM service to create, list, and update network profiles.

You can access the following types of network profile by using the same programming calls. Different types of network profiles contain different fields.

Network Profile Type Description
External All network profiles use the elements in the object definition for external network. The network definition specifies the network address configuration for the network. The external network definition can specify:
  • Existing network addresses configured on the vSphere server. They are the external part of the NAT and routed networks types. An external network profile can define a range of static IP addresses available on the external network.
  • An endpoint that allows access to IP ranges obtained from the supplied VMware internal IPAM provider or an external IPAM provider solution that you have imported and registered in vRealize Orchestrator, such as Infoblox IPAM, and existing network address ranges configured by the IPAM provider software.

An external network profile with a static IP range is a prerequisite for NAT and routed networks.

When you specify a NAT network profile or a Routed network profile, the base object definition for the external network profile is used and additional definitions for the NAT or Routed network profiles are required to complete the profile.

NAT An external network that uses network address translation (NAT) to enable one set of IP addresses for external communication and another set for internal communications. With one-to-one NAT networks, every virtual machine is assigned an external IP address from the external network profile and an internal IP address from the NAT network profile. With one-to-many NAT networks, all machines share a single IP address from the external network profile for external communication.

A NAT network profile defines local and external networks that use a translation table for mutual communication.

Routed A routed network represents a routable IP space divided across subnets that are linked together using Distributed Logical Router (DLR). Every new routed network has the next available subnet assigned to it and is associated with other routed networks that use the same network profile. The virtual machines that are provisioned with routed networks that have the same routed network profile can communicate with each other and the external network.

A routed network profile defines a routable space and available subnets.

For more information about Distributed Logical Router, see NSX Administration Guide available as a selection from the NSX for vSphere product documentation.

Each example for this use case lists a curl command with respective JSON response, plus input and output parameters. The same set of prerequisites applies to each example.