Default IP allocation in Azure

[MichelleBest]

I'm just getting started with BP and with Azure. 🙂

I'm going through the process of setting up our Azure infrastructure and have a potentially silly question...

The VNET covers IPs from 10.0.0.0/16 and when I created one in Azure, it also created a default subnet that covered 10.0.0.0/24 i.e. the first 256 addresses.

The reference architecture doc says to set up subnets for the client tier, app tier and data tier on 10.0.1.0/24, 10.0.2.0/24 and 10.0.3.0/24 respectively, which I have done. But what happens to that initial default subnet? Does it get used by BP for something?

You can probably already tell that I am also new to networking, so please be gentle 🙂

[ewilson]

Hi @MichelleBest,

10.0.0.0/16​ (65,536 total IP's) represents the entire Blue Prism virtual network in the reference guide. The other address spaces (ex. 10.0.1.0/24, 10.0.2.0/24, and 10.0.3.0/24) are subnets within the larger VNET. The idea here is that isolation of tiers is a best practice. It provides various benefits including:

• Better network performance and speed
• Increased network security
• More granular billing/auditing
• Improves the ability to manage growth of the network
• Division of environments (ex. Prod vs Test vs Dev)
• etc

The unused space within the 10.0.0.0/16 range is basically there for future growth. You don't actually have to set aside that much space in your own environment. It's up to you, your network team, and the business to determine what sort of space you need and what sort of growth you may encounter down the road.

Cheers,
Eric