Chapter 2: Network Topology Control

Configuring subnets, forwarders, and IP address scopes.

With an active regional server connection running, we establish our routing parameters and lookups entirely using the `set-config` collection utilities.

1. Establishing Upstream Lookup Loops

To avoid manual configuration loops inside the browser, we tell the regional server layout exactly where to forward external lookup traffic:

maas admin maas set-config name=upstream_dns value="8.8.8.8"

2. Ingesting Operating System Templates

We query the collection endpoints to ensure our foundational image arrays are properly indexed on local disk storage:

maas admin boot-resources read | jq -r '.[] | "\(.name)\t\(.architecture)"'

To add alternative operating systems into our deploy pipeline target lists, we register our selection variables and force a local synchronization pull:

maas admin boot-source-selections create 1 os="ubuntu" release="trusty" arches="amd64" subarches="*" labels="*"
maas admin boot-resources import

3. Activating Dynamic DHCP Allocation

We pinpoint our local fabric interface by reading parameters from our active bridge target range:

maas admin subnet read 192.168.123.0/24 | grep fabric_id

MAAS will refuse to activate DHCP switches on an untagged VLAN if a clear dynamic IP pool baseline does not exist. We execute our pool boundary allocation first:

maas admin ipranges create type=dynamic start_ip=192.168.123.190 end_ip=192.168.123.253

Now, we drop the hammer and spin DHCP tracking live across our environment:

maas admin vlan update 2 untagged dhcp_on=True primary_rack=wintermute