Source Network Address Translation (SNAT)

Source Network Address Translation (source-nat or SNAT) allows traffic from a private network to go out to the internet. Virtual machines launched on a private network can get to the internet by going through a gateway capable of performing SNAT. The gateway has one arm on the public network and as part of SNAT, it replaces the source IP of the originating packet with its own public side IP. As part of SNAT, the source port is also updated so that multiple VMs can reach the public network through a single gateway public IP.

The following diagram shows a virtual network with the private subnet of 10.1.1.0/24. The default route for the virtual network points to the SNAT gateway. The gateway replaces the source-ip from 10.1.1.0/24 and uses its public address 172.21.1.1 for outgoing packets. To maintain unique NAT sessions the source port of the traffic also needs to be replaced.

Figure 1: Virtual Network With a Private Subnet

OpenStack supports SNAT gateway implementation through its Neutron APIs for routers. The SNAT flag can be enabled or disabled on the external gateway of the router. The default is True (enabled).

The OpenContrail plugin supports the Neutron APIs for routers and creates the relevant service-template and service-instance objects in the API server. The service scheduler in OpenContrail instantiates the gateway on a randomly-selected virtual router. OpenContrail uses network namespace to support this feature.

Example Configuration: SNAT for Contrail

The SNAT feature is enabled on OpenContrail through Neutron API calls.

The following configuration example shows how to create a test network and a public network, allowing the test network to reach the public domain through the SNAT gateway.

Setting the external gateway is the trigger for OpenContrail to set up the Linux network namespace for SNAT.

The network namespace can be cleared by issuing the following Neutron command:

neutron router-gateway-clear r1

You can use the Contrail user interface to configure routers for SNAT and to check the SNAT status of routers.

To enable SNAT for a router, go to Configure > Networking > Routers. In the list of routers, select the router for which SNAT should be enabled. Click the Edit cog to reveal the Edit Routers window. Click the check box for SNAT to enable SNAT on the router.

The following shows a router for which SNAT has been Enabled.

Figure 2: Edit Router Window to Enable SNAT

When a router has been Enabled for SNAT, the configuration can be seen by selecting Configure > Networking > Routers. In the list of routers, click open the router of interest. In the list of features for that router, the status of SNAT is listed. The following shows a router that has been opened in the list. The status of the router shows that SNAT is Enabled.

Figure 3: Router Status for SNAT

You can view the real time status of a router with SNAT by viewing the instance console, as in the following.

Figure 4: Instance Details Window

The distributed SNAT feature allows virtual machines to communicate with the IP fabric network using the existing forwarding infrastructure for compute node connectivity. This functionality is achieved through port address translation of virtual machine traffic using the IP address of the compute node as the public address.

The following distributed SNAT use case is supported:

• Virtual networks with distributed SNAT enabled can communicate with the IP fabric network. The session must be initiated from a virtual machine. Sessions initiated from the external network are not supported.

Distributed SNAT is supported only for TCP and UDP, and you can configure discrete port ranges for both protocols.

A pool of ports is used for distributed SNAT. To create a pool of ports, go to Configure > Infrastructure > Global Config. The following shows an example of a port range used for port address translation.

Figure 5: Edit Forwarding Options Window

To use distributed SNAT, you must enable SNAT on the virtual network. To enable SNAT on the virtual network, go to Configure > Networking > Networks. The following shows a virtual network for which SNAT has been enabled under Advanced Options.

Figure 6: Create Window