Question Plesk on GCP - External IP assignment

[nightninja]

Hi there,

Id like to at any point, provide an external IP to a single VM (single zone) running plesk for the use of a "dedicated ip" that is assignable to a domain within Plesk.

Id also like to have a single external IP address always assigned to the VM for use as a "shared" IP within Plesk.
Whats the best way to approach this? What is the routing and mapping functionality that I need to implement specifically within GCP?

I've explored the use of cloud NAT, however this would seem to only be effective for outbound traffic.

Thanks

 

[dopeboy]

what you're trying to reach into plesk i don't see being hard since all you got to do is go to settings and swap 2 options

Same stands for gcp ?! what's the problem with it? all you need to do there is open required ports and you're done.

 

[nightninja]

what you're trying to reach into plesk i don't see being hard since all you got to do is go to settings and swap 2 options

Same stands for gcp ?! what's the problem with it? all you need to do there is open required ports and you're done.

CLARIFICATION: I forgot to mention the important part - By external IP's I meant MULTIPLE external IP's to act as dedicated IP's assignable within Plesk.

Which in the case of GCP and Plesk, it's not as easy as you'd think. I've had a GCP certified architect in to which he failed and he felt pretty bad about it.
His approach was to create multiple VPC's as with GCP you can only create additional NIC's provided you have another VPC to attach the NIC to.
From there you can assign multiple NIC's to the VM thus multiple external IP's which by default quota you only get 8 NIC's per VM anyway.

This is the totally wrong approach and a huge waste of VPC's.

Neither is a reverse proxy.
Neither is Cloud NAT (as it's outgoing only anyway).
A staff member of Plesk suggested using a load balancer to which you can assign an external IP and point it to a internal subnet on the VM.... Still not dedicated.

They are common solutions yes but not in the case of GCP based infrastructure.

It has nothing to do with ports specifically, it's about mapping IP's, in this case - multiple external IP's for Plesk to utilise as "Dedicated".
You seem fairly expert about it though, what would your approach be?

 

[dopeboy]

i've used GCP and i know this VPC for each additional IPv4 it's a kind of bad way to go

But since you got only 8 available IPv4 x machine i don't think google is a good place to run this kind of project if you have a high volume of reqs for dedicated ipv4 you could try something like ovh that you pay only 3$ one time payment for each IPv4 then if you're interested on having google route your traffic then you can use google machines only as reverse proxy to your ovh server even a small GCP instance can do this job since only mostly internet will be used. This is smth i was doing before but left since google charges really high for bandiwdth usage!

Now your issue with your architect is that in order to have more then one external ip on your gcp instance you have to create it since the begin when you create your instance you can't do this after and i guess this was the reason that he wasn't able to help you. however i have some months not using gcp this may've change now idk...

However i see no problem for attaching 8 VPC and using 8 IPv4 on your GCP machine and using them on plesk as some shared some dedicated as you wish if you still have issue about this please explain better what is wrong.

 

[nightninja]

i've used GCP and i know this VPC for each additional IPv4 it's a kind of bad way to go

But since you got only 8 available IPv4 x machine i don't think google is a good place to run this kind of project if you have a high volume of reqs for dedicated ipv4 you could try something like ovh that you pay only 3$ one time payment for each IPv4 then if you're interested on having google route your traffic then you can use google machines only as reverse proxy to your ovh server even a small GCP instance can do this job since only mostly internet will be used. This is smth i was doing before but left since google charges really high for bandiwdth usage!

Now your issue with your architect is that in order to have more then one external ip on your gcp instance you have to create it since the begin when you create your instance you can't do this after and i guess this was the reason that he wasn't able to help you. however i have some months not using gcp this may've change now idk...

However i see no problem for attaching 8 VPC and using 8 IPv4 on your GCP machine and using them on plesk as some shared some dedicated as you wish if you still have issue about this please explain better what is wrong.

Yeah how are you finding OVH by comparison (in general)?

Primarily, it's googles network that has kept me with them, along with all their other services combined.
However, I've not been able to generate any sort of foreseeable costs as I've just started this project and I'm actually really fresh to GCP as I've always just hosted on small local xen servers.
Their calculator at the moment is showing estimates already over my budget but I'll let it run for a couple of months for real world pricing.

Yes regarding the architect guy's issue, the major here is that you cannot add additional NIC's after VM creation.
But actually I discovered all these things myself prior to him, so watching him do all the same things was rather painful.

Yeah while there's no real issue with using 8 VPC's under the restrictions of the default quota, it's still such a weird workaround and impractical.
I guess the most practical way is as you explained it, have a reverse proxy box in front of all the VM's and distribute out to the subnet.

This would work, but you still need to get traffic into your actual GCP project, so you're back at square one (How do I point this external IP to the proxy box?).
Even if the proxy box sits outside GCP, you still need to get it all in.

Over the time that I had been asking around on forums etc (before I found the solution), I've been told I was stupid to expect to add larger volumes of external IP's or stupid to even conceive of the idea within GCP. Didn't know what I was talking about and that it wasn't possible. There's some a**holes in the community. Even invested to have an architect take care of it as a last resort still to no avail. So what do you do? Do it yourself! Keep persisting!

So, I value your input! Cheers!

I actually found the solution which was hidden in the API documentation and standard documentation.
Google hasn't implemented it into the console GUI yet which I guess is the first place people would look and if it's not there, some would automatically assume it's not possible then.

It took me 3 long days of scouring the documentation (as I'm still learning and VERY fresh to GCP) and this wasn't without running into other problems along the way.

Basically you need to use a combination of NEG's and routing to the subnet. It's all 100% possible with one VPC, It'll take a while to set up but it only requires one initial setup. From there... it's clean, and fast to put up multiple external IPs on demand, to be assigned as dedicated in plesk. On top of this, you could throw in a LB front end, give it an external IP and point it across to a different subnet that you've given to Plesk.

You could have a bunch of external IP's pre-promoted to static and assigned to the VM and let your automation software provision a dedicated IP in Plesk.
But I don't know what the cost is of have external IP's just sitting there with no traffic in GCP, of course until it's claimed by a "dedicated" customer.

The next thing would be to simply have google increase your quota for external IP's from the default 8, although of course this has to all be within reason.

Direct message me if you're interested in knowing more and I'd be happy to share with you my findings.

 

[nightninja]

But since you got only 8 available IPv4 x machine i don't think google is a good place to run this kind of project if you have a high volume of reqs for dedicated ipv4

I actually think it's a perfect place for this type of project, except in the case of COST. Which I am yet to know, but it's looking rather expensive especially compared to the competition. Actually, Azure and AWS apparently offer easier solutions to this situation of external IP's.

 

[dopeboy]

i'm happy with ovh i've been using them for years bandwidth's what i mostly care which ovh offers unmetered.

In other hand google has ofcourse a better quality but higher costs as your project seems new you have many to see. i suggest keeping an eye on your bw usage because a mistake may cost a bunch of money. Google Cloud Platform Pricing Calculator | Google Cloud

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prnt.sc

Google is not a friendly option for low budget. PS. Even for high budget i still don't understand the idea of how can you get your money out of these high priced google machines that's the reason why ppl don't use google for reselling web hosting.

 

[nightninja]

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Yeah I always knew it was expensive but I didn't take into account outer regions.

I'm now thinking about spinning up a couple of NUC's and just throw some CDN on top.