How to activate DHCP on a legacy Private Network

Reviewed on 08 January 2024 • Published on 06 July 2023

All Private Networks created after July 12 2023 have DHCP built into them. A CIDR block is defined when you create the Private Network. When a resource is attached to the Private Network, an IPv4 and IPv6 address is statically allocated to them from this block. This is all managed by our internal IPAM, and removes the need for manual configuration of your IP addresses.

However, while DHCP is built into all new Private Networks, it may not be automatically activated for older Private Networks. Previously, DHCP was a function of Public Gateways. Only legacy Private Networks that were previously attached to a Public Gateway with DHCP, have DHCP automatically activated on them. On all other Private Networks created prior to July 12 2023, DHCP remains deactivated by default.

Tip

Check out our migration documentation for full information about how “old” Private Networks were migrated when VPC went into General Availability, and for more information about DHCP.

We highly recommend activating DHCP on all of your Private Networks, to let us take care of IP address management in our fully-integrated ecosystem. This page explains how to activate DHCP on Private Networks where it has not been automatically activated.

Important

Activating DHCP is permanent, and there is no way to undo the activation.

Activating DHCP will overwrite any existing manually configured static IP addresses for resources attached to the network. Attached resources will receive new dynamically-assigned private IP addresses (one IPv4 and one IPv6) from the network’s pre-defined CIDR block. The CIDR block will be displayed at the time of activation (see step 5 below), and you will be able to view your resources’ newly assigned IP addresses after activation.

Before you start

To complete the actions presented below, you must have:

A Scaleway account logged into the console
Owner status or IAM permissions allowing you to perform actions in the intended Organization
Created a Private Network in which DHCP is not yet activated, before July 12, 2023

How to activate DHCP on a Private Network

Click VPC in the Network section of the side menu. The following screen displays:
Click the VPC for the region which corresponds to your Private Network.

A list of your Private Networks in this VPC displays. Private Networks which do not have DHCP activated have an ! icon next to them.
Click the Private Network you want to activate DHCP on. The following banner displays:
Click Activate DHCP on the banner. The following screen displays:
Read the warning message carefully, and click Activate DHCP when you are ready.

DHCP is activated on your network, and attached resources will receive dynamically-assigned static IP addresses no later than one hour from the time of activation. You can view their IP addresses by following this procedure.