IPv6 Support in Data Fabric

Describes the IPv6 support feature for Data Fabric.

IMPORTANT
HPE Ezmeral Ecosystem Pack (EEP) components do not support IPv6.

Data Fabric can be installed on hosts with IPv6 addresses. In other words, external endpoints for Data Fabric can have IPv6 addresses. Data Fabric can communicate with clients over IPv6 addressing. Inter-cluster traffic and intra-cluster traffic over IPv6 connections is supported with IPv4 compatibility.

Data Fabric deployment over IPv6 addresses is possible when both the hardware hosting Data Fabric and the Data Fabric software are able to detect and support IPv6 addresses.

The underlying hardware that hosts Data Fabric must have a network interface card (NIC) that supports IPv6 addressing.

An application that wishes to communicate with Data Fabric over IPv6 can do so, when Data Fabric is installed on IPv6-compatible hardware and IPv6 support is enabled on Data Fabric.

NOTE
When you have a network interface card (NIC) that supports both IPv4 and IPv6 addressing, each IP address must be identifiable by a distinct hostname. In other words, a single hostname must NOT map to both the IPv4 and IPv6 addresses.
The following table describes the terminology related to IPv6 client/server nodes.
Term Description
IPv6-aware The term denotes readiness of the underlying hardware. It indicates that the NIC associated with a node that hosts Data Fabric is IPv6 compatible, and can communicate with other nodes with IPv6 and IPv4 addresses.
IPv6-unaware The term denotes readiness of the underlying hardware. It indicates that the NIC associated with a node that hosts Data Fabric is incompatible to handle IPv6 traffic, and can handle IPv4 traffic only.
IPv6-enabled The term denotes that IPv6 is enabled on Data Fabric software. The Data Fabric node on which IPv6 is enabled is able to communicate with IPv6 addresses. The node is able to communicate with IPv4 addresses.
IPv6-only The term denotes that IPv6 is enabled on Data Fabric software. The Data Fabric node on which IPv6 is enabled is able to communicate exclusively with IPv6 addresses only. Communication with IPv4 addresses is not supported on this node.

The following matrix explains in detail the communication between a client node and a Data Fabric node for various IP address type combinations.

Type of application (Type of client node) IPv6-unaware server (IPv4 -only server node) IPv6-unaware server (IPv6-enabled server node IPv6-aware server (IPv6-only server node) IPv6-aware server (IPv6-enabled server node)
IPv6-unaware client (IPv4-only node) client-server communication takes place over IPv4 client-server communication takes place over IPv4 no communication client-server communication takes place over IPv4
IPv6-unaware client (IPv6-enabled node) client-server communication takes place over IPv4 client-server communication takes place over IPv4 no communication client-server communication takes place over IPv4
IPv6-aware client (IPv6-only node) no communication no communication client-server communication takes place over IPv6 client-server communication takes place over IPv6
IPv6-aware client (IPv6-enabled node) client-server communication takes place over IPv4 client-server communication takes place over IPv4 client-server communication takes place over IPv6 client-server communication takes place over IPv6