A Guest Network is the simplest network shape on Atlas Cloud: a flat L2 network with NAT to the internet — think “home Wi-Fi”. You get one virtual router, DHCP, and a public-IP NAT in one piece. Good for a single VM or a handful of related VMs. For multi-tier setups with subnet isolation, use a VPC instead.

Create a guest network

Console

  1. Network → Guest networks.
  2. Click Add network.
  3. Use the default offering (DefaultIsolatedNetworkOfferingWithSourceNatService).
  4. Pick zone is1, give it a name (e.g. default).
  5. Click OK. A few seconds later your network is up.

CLI

NETOFF=$(cmk list networkofferings name=DefaultIsolatedNetworkOfferingWithSourceNatService | jq -r '.networkoffering[0].id')
ZONE=$(cmk list zones name=is1 | jq -r '.zone[0].id')
cmk create network name=default displaytext=default networkofferingid=$NETOFF zoneid=$ZONE

Terraform

resource "cloudstack_network" "default" {
  name             = "default"
  display_text     = "default"
  cidr             = "10.99.1.0/24"
  network_offering = "DefaultIsolatedNetworkOfferingWithSourceNatService"
  zone             = "is1"
}

Guest networks

Egress rules

This is the most important section on the page. Atlas’s default isolated network blocks outbound traffic by default. Until you add egress rules, your VMs cannot:

  • apt update / dnf install — outbound HTTP/HTTPS blocked
  • Resolve hostnames — outbound DNS blocked
  • Pull container images — same

Open the network in the console, go to the Egress rules tab, and add:

ProtocolPortCIDRPurpose
TCP800.0.0.0/0HTTP
TCP4430.0.0.0/0HTTPS, container registries
UDP530.0.0.0/0DNS
TCP530.0.0.0/0DNS over TCP

CLI

NET=<network-id>
cmk create egressfirewallrule networkid=$NET protocol=tcp startport=80 endport=80 cidrlist=0.0.0.0/0
cmk create egressfirewallrule networkid=$NET protocol=tcp startport=443 endport=443 cidrlist=0.0.0.0/0
cmk create egressfirewallrule networkid=$NET protocol=udp startport=53 endport=53 cidrlist=0.0.0.0/0
cmk create egressfirewallrule networkid=$NET protocol=tcp startport=53 endport=53 cidrlist=0.0.0.0/0

Public IP and port-forwarding

The guest network’s first public IP is the Source NAT for outbound traffic. To accept inbound traffic on a VM (e.g. SSH, HTTP), allocate an additional Public IP, add a firewall rule, and forward a port. See Public IPs.

Virtual Router

Every guest network has a Virtual Router (VR) that handles DHCP, DNS, NAT, and firewall. The VR lives on the first usable IP in the network — for 10.99.1.0/24 that’s 10.99.1.1. You usually don’t interact with the VR directly, but it’s the answer to “where did this default gateway come from?”.

Limits

Atlas supports Isolated guest networks today. L2-only and Shared networks are not exposed. For routed multi-tier setups, use VPC.

Delete a network

You can only delete a network with no instances attached. Stop and destroy the instances first, then:

CLI

cmk delete network id=<network-id>

Common failures

  • VMs can’t reach the internet. You forgot egress rules. Add the four above.
  • Network is in transition state on delete. A VM is still attached, or the VR hasn’t finished tearing down. Wait 30 seconds and retry.