Assigning static IP addresses

With servers, it’s very important that your IP addresses remain fixed and do not change for any reason. If an IP address does change (such as a dynamic lease with no reservation), your users will experience an outage, services will fail, or entire sites may become unavailable. When you install Ubuntu Server, it will grab a dynamically assigned lease from your DHCP server, but after you configure the server the way you want it, it’s important to set a permanent IP address right away before it’s considered production-ready. One exception to this rule is an Ubuntu-based VPS. Cloud providers that bill you for these servers will have an automatic system in place to declare an IP address for your new VPS, and will already have it configured to remain in place. But in the case of virtual or physical servers you manage yourself, you’ll start off with a dynamic address, unless you’ve already configured a static IP address during...