Increase the availability of your web services with floating IPs
All of our VPS solutions are delivered with a pre-configured IPv4 (/32) and IPv6 (/128). You can assign up to 16 additional IP addresses to your virtual private server (VPS). With the Additional IP service, you get additional IPs (or floating IPs) that can be used to improve availability.
- Improved responsiveness to technical incidents that could threaten your business.
- Increased visibility among customers worldwide.
Our Additional IPs are compatible with all of our solutions, and can easily be migrated across all of your OVHcloud services — from VPS servers to Bare Metal dedicated servers and Public Cloud instances.
Ensure access to your websites or applications for all your visitors, wherever they are based.
Give your users the ultimate experience
Get increased scalability for service management
Are you deploying new applications? Activating one or more additional IP addresses may be useful if you are upgrading your services, or migrating them between your hosting plans. For example, if you have multiple VPS servers, the IPs can be moved from one service to another within the same datacentre. You can move them to another datacentre in the same country, and configure multiple IP addresses on your services. This means you can switch the workload to the VPS server of your choice, without having to reconfigure the fixed IP.
Boost your service availability
With Additional IPs, also called failover IPs, you can urgently transfer your IP address from one service to another. This can be useful in the event of service interruptions, major incidents, or servers exceeding their capacity. With these Additional IPs, you can ensure that your services are always available, even during unforeseen events.
Expand your audience
You can assign additional geolocated IPs to your services. These IPs are available in 14 countries in Europe (Belgium, Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Lithuania, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain, United Kingdom and Switzerland).
You may be wondering why geolocated IPs are useful. IP geolocation significantly improves your search engine ranking for a targeted local audience. For example, if you would like to customise your e-commerce website and target a Portuguese audience, you can order an IP address in Portugal. This will enhance your relevance to potential Portuguese users.
Optimise service availability and visibility
Failover
Are you familiar with the principle of master/slave servers? This principle consists of an active master server that ensures your websites and applications work continuously, while a slave server is used in support of the main server. In the event of an unforeseen incident, this method helps maintain an optimal level of service. This principle is even more effective if the slave server is located in a separate datacentre to the master server. One of the downsides of this principle is the DNS propagation delay. Because the master and slave servers have different IP addresses, data takes longer to be transmitted to the other DNS zones on the network. To compensate for this latency, an Additional IP is the best solution, as it enables users to switch IPs from one solution to another. The IP itself is moved, reducing the propagation time for DNS zones.
IP reputation
Your IP may be classified as spam or dangerous after an overly aggressive promotional campaign or cyberattack. On top of negatively affecting your IP’s reputation, it may be blacklisted on certain search engines, and your emails may be sent to users’ spam folders. If your IP reputation is damaged, you can change it by choosing an additional IP for your virtual server. By doing this, you will not have to make a full server change.
Support your growth
Is your project growing quicker than expected? Set up a multi-IP architecture.
Whether you’ve got a website with an increasing number of visitors, a server with a quickly-growing gaming community, or a massively successful online store, a multi-IP architecture will support your growth. For example, for your website, you just need to put part of your pages on Additional IP A and another part on Additional IP B. When the server reaches its capacity limit, you can buy a new VPS, copy the content of the pages located on IP B, then switch IP B to this new server.
Need more information?
The Additional IP service is compatible with our entire VPS hosting range.
Your questions answered
How do I get an additional IP address for my VPS server?
If you already have a VPS, simply log in to the OVHcloud Control Panel. In the “Bare Metal Cloud” section, click on the “IP” section at the bottom of the menu on the left, then “Order additional IPs” in the top right-hand corner to get an IP address for your VPS hosting.
What is the limit for IPv4 and IPv6 addresses per VPS?
By default, our VPS solutions are delivered with an IPv4 and IPv6 address. However, you can add up to 16 additional IPs per virtual private server.
What is the link between an IP and a domain name?
By using additional IP addresses, you can have one domain name per IP. This way, you can improve the SEO ranking of your domain names, and avoid having your emails sent to spam folders. If your website is translated into several languages, you can attach a UK IP to your .co.uk domain name, a French IP to your .fr domain name, an Italian IP to your .it domain name, etc.
How do I get an IP address?
To use our additional IPs, you need to have a fixed IP address. If you are an OVHcloud customer, you have a fixed IP address included with your Web Hosting plan. If you do not have one yet, you can easily get one from the OVHcloud Control Panel.
Are failover IPs compatible with all OVHcloud services?
Yes. Whether you have a dedicated server, a Cloud VPS or Public Cloud instance, you can use failover IPs to move your IP addresses from one service to another quickly, and without interruption. This operation can be carried out automatically or manually, and is unnoticeable to your users. It can be useful for service migration (e.g. moving projects from the development environment to the production environment), or when switching to a backup server in the event of an outage or technical failure.
What is a geolocated IP?
In Europe, geolocated IPs are distributed by the European IP Networks (RIPE) registry. This open community is responsible for maintaining and participating in the internet’s administrative and technical development. RIPE’s mission is to assign IP blocks to different Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and store the information generated in a public database. In Canada and the United States, the American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN) distributes IPs. ARIN geographical IP addresses can be used in the same way as RIPE IPs. They can be assigned to IP blocks and used as failover IPs.
How should I optimise my VPS?
Floating IPs are a first step in optimising your virtual private server, but they are not the only one. To get the most out of your virtual servers, there are several configurations and best practices that can be set up to suit your needs. For example, you can back up your VPS by taking backups or snapshots of your server, to help you preserve the data hosted on your virtual machine. With these backups, you can ensure that your business stays up-and-running. Since our servers offer a great degree of flexibility, you can also increase the storage space of your VPS. By adding external additional disks, you increase the dedicated resources of your VPS hosting platform. This means you can handle peak loads as your business grows, or you can get redundancy by replicating your data to ensure business continuity.
