Creating an Empty Services Network when using on-demand Service Tiles for Non-On-Demand Usage Only

Products

• Operations Manager

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

When using certain versions of service tiles in Operations Manager, an operator will not be able to Apply Changes until they have defined a dedicated Services network. This network is required if there is any tile that offers an "on-demand service" mode of operation, even if the operator does not intend to use the tile in this way.

 

Environment

Cause

Operations Manager requires the definition of a dedicated service network for on-demand services to use for deploying on-demand service instances. This is to avoid IP allocation conflicts between the networks Operations Manager manages and the network used for on-demand instances. Some service tiles offer both modes of operation, but Operations Manager will require specifying a services network even if the operator has no intention of using those tiles in on-demand mode.

 

Resolution

Operators can create a "dummy" services network, with much of the same information as used to define the main network, but can mark all IPs in the "dummy" network as reserved. This satisfies the requirement of creating a dedicated services network, but does not require creating an actual network resource in the IaaS, or constraining IP space for the main network.

In the setup for the particular tile associated with the service network, you will need to turn off the smoke tests relating to on-demand services. Depending on the specific tiles in question, you may be able to disable only the on-demand part of the smoke tests for that tile, or you may have to disable smoke tests for that tile altogether.

Below is a practical example of how to implement this workaround. For the example options below we assume the following is true for the configured main network:

• We have a CIDR of "10.190.20.0/24"
• We have a reserved IP range of "10.190.20.1-10.190.20.10"

Main Network
CIDR	10.190.20.0/24
Reserved IP Ranges	- 10.190.20.1-10.190.20.10

We can create the dummy network using the following configuration settings and then disable smoke tests for the given tile with on-demand services.
 

Dummy Network
CIDR	10.190.20.0/24
Reserved IP Ranges	- 10.190.20.1-10.190.20.255