Network Address Translation with NSX

Abiquo can automatically configure Network Address Translation (NAT) for your users with a new plugin for NSX. The NAT feature enables more effective use of public IPs, because multiple VMs can share a single IP using different ports. As for other NSX network blueprints, the administrator configures the integration and creates a device in Abiquo to define the connection to the NSX system. Then the administrator creates NAT networks that contain a range of public IPs for use with NAT.

The administrator manages the NAT IPs in the same way as public IPs.

When the user creates a VDC, the platform automatically assigns an available IP in a NAT network. This will be used to configure a default SNAT rule for all the private networks in the VDC, enabling an outside network or internet connection through the NAT IP, which is marked with a star symbol. The virtual datacenters NAT screen displays the NAT rules created by the users for the virtual datacenter; the platform does not display the default rule. A user with appropriate privileges can change the default NAT IP.

Users can work with NAT IPs by adding NAT rules for the VM.

Users can also add NAT IPs as the public IP addresses for load balancers.

The platform will create a NAT rule to match the routing rule port mappings of a load balancer with a NAT IP.

Generally, to enable services running on VM ports to be accessed from the outside network via the NAT IP, users will create DNAT rules. However, users can also create additional custom SNAT rules for VMs, to override the default rules and send outgoing traffic through a different NAT IP.