After a groupnet and subnet are defined in OneFS, the next step is configuring an IP address pool and assigning interfaces to participate in this pool.

After the IP address pool is defined, under the SmartConnect Advanced section, you can select an Allocation Method. By default, this option is unavailable and shown as Static if a SmartConnect Advanced license is not installed. If a SmartConnect Advanced license is installed, the default Allocation Method is still Static, but you may also select Dynamic.

The static allocation method assigns a single persistent IP address to each interface selected in the pool, leaving additional IP addresses in the pool unassigned if the number of IP addresses is greater than interfaces. The lowest IP address of the pool is assigned to the lowest Logical Node Number (LNN) from the selected interfaces, subsequently for the second-lowest IP address and LNN. If a node or interface becomes unavailable, this IP address does not move to another node or interface. Also, when the node or interface becomes unavailable, it is removed from the SmartConnect zone, and new connections will not be assigned to the node. Once the node is available again, SmartConnect adds it back into the zone and assigns new connections.

On the contrary, the dynamic allocation method splits all available IP addresses in the pool across all selected interfaces. Under the dynamic allocation method, OneFS attempts to assign the IP addresses evenly if possible. However, if the interface-to-IP-address ratio is not an integer value, a single interface might have more IP addresses than another.