What are Floating IPs and how do they work?
Floating IPs are public IP addresses that you can add to Hetzner cloud servers additionally to their Primary IPs.
Floating IPs help you to create highly flexible setups. You can assign a Floating IP to any server that already has a Primary IP. The server can then use this IP. You can reassign it to a different server at any time, or you can choose to unassign the Floating IP from servers all together.
You can use Floating IPs globally. This means you can assign a Floating IP to a server in one location and later reassign it to a server in a different location in the same network zone. For optimal routing and latency, you should use Floating IPs in the location where you create them.
For Floating IPs to work, you must configure them inside the operating system of the server you use.
To temporarily configure a Floating IPv4 "1.2.3.4", you can run:
ip addr add 1.2.3.4/32 dev eth0Please note that this configuration will not survive a reboot.
To configure the first IPv6 address of Floating IPv6 netblock 2a01:4f8:2c17:2c::/64, you should run:
ip addr add 2a01:4f8:2c17:2c::1/128 dev eth0How do I permanently configure a Floating IP?
To learn how to permanently configure a Floating IP, read our Tutorial
Are Floating IPs location bound?
No, Floating IPs do not have to be assigned to a server from the same location. Please note, however, that the Floating IP has to be from the same network zone. This means that you can assign a Floating IP from Falkenstein (eu-central) to a server from Falkenstein, Nuremberg or Helsinki, a Floating IP from Ashburn, VA (us-east) only to a server that is also located in Ashburn, VA, and a Floating IP from Hillsboro, OR (us-west) only to a server that is also located in Hillsboro, OR.