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794

answers:

4

... say for CentOS?

A: 

Check out this article on Virtual IP address. As indicated it usually floats between machines, and is sometimes used to fail-over a service from one device to another. Are you thinking of a virtual interface instead perhaps?

/Allan

Allan Wind
A: 

From what I understand a virtul IP can let you abstract the address from the physical interface(s) the traffic actually goes through. If your server has two network cards it can have a single virtual IP and have the traffic go through either network physical interface. If hardware failure occurs on one of the two network cards, the traffic can keep going with the second one as a backup. I assume that this is more relevant on servers where such parts can be hotswapped.

Gilles
+1  A: 

A Virtual IP address is a secondary IP set on a host, it's just another IP bound to an adapter (adapters if bonded). This IP is useful for many things but most commonly used for webservers to run multiple SSL certificates for multiple sites.

In CentOS you pretty much copy the /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0 (whichever for the adapter you want) to /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0:1, In there change the devicename=eth0 to devicename=eth0:1 and change the IP for the new "virtual IP" you want.

A: 

@sardonic

Isnt it called IP Aliasing ??

Can anyone explain about the difference between virtual IP Addressing and the Virtual IP Interface ?