Maaz Anjum's Blog

VirtualBox, NAT, and Port Forwarding

At Bobby’s (@dbasolved) insistence, I decided to write this post because it might prove useful for some folks. He mentioned following a note by Jeff Smith (@thatjeffsmith) that he is unable to locate at this time. If you are a VirtualBox user, you obviously have a need to maintain multiple Virtual Machines. You would also need to setup a type for one (or more) of its network adaptors. Let’s keep going here, I promise there’s a point to this :) Below is a list of your options:

By default, the NAT option for the first adaptor is selected. NAT = Network Address Translation and will basically let the Guest VM share the same network as your Host (laptop/desktop_ where you can check emails or browse the internet. Chapter 6 of the VBox Documentation here will explain the other options. Without going into too many details about the other options, if you really knew what you were doing and how you’d like your network to be configured then most likely NAT will not be your choice. Myself, I prefer to use Bridged Adaptor which effectively assigned an IP address within the VBox network and I can easily SSH or SQLPlus onto the VM.

This post is aimed to discuss network connectivity to a Guest VM while using NAT using Port Forwarding. I use OSX so my screenshots and menu options might be in a slightly different location than on Windows, however the steps are pretty much the same. Also note that the VM can remain powered on during the setup steps below.

Si Comencia!

1. Navigate to the Settings menu for the VM in question.

2. Click on the “Network Tab”.

3. Assuming your adaptor is enable and configured for NAT, click on the “Advanced” section.

4. Now, the key here is to setup Port Forwarding.

5. Port Forwarding is controlled via “Rules”. These can be configured for TCP and/or UDP protocols. In this example, I want to setup SSH and SQLNET rules. Enter a Rule Name, Select the TCP Protocol, Host Port, and Guest Port. You’ll notice that I intentionally left the IP address sections blank, that is because the rule is generic enough that it will apply to any IP address on the adaptor. Click OK when done.

6. Similarly add a SQLNET port as well and click OK twice.

6. At this point, we are ready to test connectivity. I used the “Terminal” app on OSX, but the same can done from putty. Why am I connecting to my localhost? Well, the nature of NAT is a shared network so when a connection attempt to the port 2222 is made, it is automatically forwarded (via the VBox VM Rule) to the correct Guest VM. 

theStone:~ maazanjum$ ssh -p 2222 root@localhost
The authenticity of host '[localhost]:2222 ([127.0.0.1]:2222)' can't be established.
RSA key fingerprint is ad:ea:6e:84:d8:2d:1e:ff:bc:69:fc:14:47:2e:67:b5.
Are you sure you want to continue connecting (yes/no)? yes
Warning: Permanently added '[localhost]:2222' (RSA) to the list of known hosts.
root@localhost's password: 
Last login: Wed Mar  5 16:04:40 2014 from 10.0.2.2
[root@db12c ~]#  

To pictorially review, we basically enabled Port Forwarding for SSH and SQL as illustrated below.

The only catch is that your rules across all Guest VM’s need to be unique. For example, if Rule:SSH:2222 points to Guest VM 1’s Port SSH:22, then for a Guest VM 2 you would likely need a Rule:SSH:2223. I know, it can get a bit confusing but come up with a port numbering scheme. I imagine that you wouldn’t set up Port Forwarding for all of your Guest VMs!

Hope this was helpful!

Cheers.