By creating a Neutron port manually, users have the ability to specify a particular fixed IP address, MAC address, security group, and more.

To create a port, use the openstack port create command, as shown here:

openstack port create
--network <network> [--description <description>]
[--device <device-id>]
[--mac-address <mac-address>]
[--device-owner <device-owner>]
[--vnic-type <vnic-type>] [--host <host-id>]
[--dns-name dns-name]
[--fixed-ip subnet=<subnet>,ip-address=<ip-address>]
[--binding-profile <binding-profile>]
[--enable | --disable] [--project <project>]
[--project-domain <project-domain>]
[--security-group <security-group> | --no-security-group]
[--qos-policy <qos-policy>]
[--enable-port-security | --disable-port-security]
[--allowed-address ip-address=<ip>[,mac-address=<mac>]]
[--tag <tag> | --no-tag]
<name>

Once created, the port can then be associated with a virtual machine instance or other virtual network device. It can also be used to reserve an IP address in a subnet. In the next chapter, we will look at creating ports and associating them with instances in multiple ways.