Summary

  • A Scaleway public Load Balancer must have IPv4 and may add IPv6. An IPv6-only public configuration is unsupported.
  • The listed Load Balancer IPv4 price is €0.005 an hour before tax. Flexible IP billing continues throughout reservation, including while unattached, and ends on deletion.

The new front door comes with a curious condition: keep renting the old key. Scaleway lets customers add IPv6 to a public load balancer, but the IPv4 address must stay. The engineering report can celebrate the newer protocol while the invoice continues to recognise its predecessor.

This arrangement is set out plainly in Scaleway’s public and private accessibility documentation. Public load balancers require IPv4; IPv6 is optional. For buyers, the distinction is commercial as well as technical. Adding a way to communicate does not confer permission to remove an existing resource from the order.

The missing choice in the basket

The flexible-IP guide expressly rules out an IPv6-only public load balancer. Customers can have IPv4 or IPv4 alongside IPv6. The configuration that would retain this public product while dispensing with IPv4 is absent.

That leaves two different measures of migration. IPv6’s share of requests describes how visitors arrive. The count of reserved IPv4 addresses describes what the operator still holds. The first can improve while the second stands perfectly still.

Consider a hypothetical entrance whose visitors all use IPv6. Under the documented product rule, its IPv4 requirement would remain. This is a consequence of the specification, rather than an observation of customer traffic. It locates a source of address demand that can survive the imagined disappearance of traffic using that address: the service’s minimum configuration.

Automation carries the same rule into deployment. Scaleway’s official cloud-controller annotations default the flexible-IP type to IPv4 and permit IPv4 or the IPv4, IPv6 combination. IPv4 is required. Kubernetes can place the order efficiently; it cannot bargain an unavailable option into existence. A compulsory item remains compulsory when software fills the basket.

Half a cent with staying power

Scaleway’s network price list lists Load Balancer IPv4 at €0.005 an hour and LB-S at €0.023 an hour, before tax. Using an illustrative 730 hours for each produces €3.65 for the address and €16.79 for LB-S, or €20.44 across those two items. These are published hourly rates multiplied by an assumed duration, not a customer’s observed monthly bill.

The address is roughly 21.7% of that LB-S base cost. The denominator matters: this compares the address with one small load balancer, not with an enterprise’s entire cloud expenditure. Even the narrow comparison is revealing. A separately priced compulsory accessory adds about a fifth to the headline cost of the basic product.

Calling it an additional IP in a tariff does not make it dispensable in a public configuration. The price list assigns the accounting line; the product rules determine the minimum purchase. A procurement comparison that copies only the main price leaves a necessary component outside the calculation.

Duration supplies the less conspicuous cost. The IP billing explanation says flexible IPs are billed separately from their associated resource. Reservation starts the clock; deletion stops it. An unattached address remains billable while reserved.

Zero traffic is therefore a poor cancellation notice. A finished experiment or retired service can leave an address behind for possible reuse. Long after the team has forgotten the possibility, the hourly meter remains an admirably committed employee.

Stability has a useful job

A fixed address provides something real. The Load Balancer FAQ describes a stable frontend IP, with traffic rerouted to a replica if a failure occurs. That is the provider’s stated function. It gives external systems a steady entrance while the service deals with internal changes.

DNS records, customer configurations and external allowlists can accumulate around that entrance. Each dependency adds value to keeping it stable and work to replacing it. A cheap resource can acquire expensive relationships.

Its mobility has limits. A Load Balancer IP can be reused with another load balancer in the same availability zone; it is not freely transferable to an instance or a bare-metal server. The product guide also prevents treating an attached address as a component that can simply be detached and exchanged. IPv6 can be added to an existing load balancer that lacks it, but that permission does not make already attached addresses freely replaceable.

Deleting an attached IP requires deleting the load balancer and selecting the IP-deletion option. Deleting the load balancer while retaining its IP is another choice. That preserves a reuse option and preserves the paid reservation. An apparent leftover in the accounts may be an intentional continuity provision, awaiting a proper owner and review date.

A private load balancer draws a different boundary. It has no public IP and cannot be reached directly from the internet. Public or private accessibility cannot be changed after creation. Replacing a public product with a private one therefore requires a new answer to how visitors get in. Removing the address line is easier than explaining the vanished entrance to customers.

A migration needs a return receipt

The RIPE NCC member record identifies Scaleway SAS in France. It establishes identity, not an address inventory or acquisition cost. The cited product documents do not explain why public load balancers require IPv4; an official IPv6-only public option that permits IPv4 release would change the dependency described here.

For now, two accomplishments deserve separate evidence. Enabling IPv6 proves a new communication capability. Deleting IPv4 while keeping the required service proves a new freedom over the resource mix. A project can deliver the first without having the product option needed for the second.

Scarce resources acquire long lives in ordinary places: mandatory creation fields, stable endpoints and hourly billing. They need no nostalgic customers to remain employed. The migration report needs something less glamorous than another adoption chart: a receipt showing that the old key has actually been returned.