Hi,
When creating a new VM instance in GCE if you click Advanced->Networking->Network Interfaces->Default then it will show Primary Internal IP “Ephemeral (Automatic)” or “Ephemeral (Custom)”.
The word “ephemeral” has a meaning when dealing with IP addresses. This usually means that if the instance is stopped, then it might get assigned a new ephemeral IP address from the pool of available addresses. However, in terms of internal IP’s, I believe those don’t change in GCE. They stay constant which is actually very convenient.
Should the drop-down be changed to say “Automatically Assigned” vs. “Custom”. That is, remove the word “ephemeral”?
Hi,
Nope.. You must reserve external IP or static IP in this case to be able to remove ephemeral behaviour.
VPC → your VPC → VPC network details → Static internal IP → reserver internal IP OR VPC → your VPC → IP addresses → External IP addresses → Reserve External IP Address.
Hi @DamianS thanks for your answer. It sounds like you are saying it is “Static Internal IP” vs “Ephemeral Internal IP”. However, you could imagine the existence of three categories instead:
Manually Assigned Internal IP
Automatically Assigned Internal IP
“Ephemeral” internal IP
What I am proposing is to remove the use of the word “ephemeral”, because the automatically assigned internal IP’s stays connected to the instance when it is stopped. Depending on the situation, that behavior can be important to know about.
In testing, if you stop a GCE virtual instance, do you observe the IP stays associated with the instance? This was confirmed in an earlier forum post, some time back.
You are right with statement about “automatically assigned internal IP’s stays connected to the instance when it is stopped.” However, if you delete or recreate this instance, this IP will not be associate anymore.
I understood that your post was written in question style rather than idea or proposal style
