Configuring a Network

VirtualBox has a few different networking modes. The default mode, NAT, short for “Network Address Translation,” works like the router we might have in our homes. The operating system in the virtual machine can access the outside network by forwarding the requests to the host operating system, just like how our home router lets us use a single internet connection across all of our devices. The downside with this approach is that we can’t access any services running inside the virtual machine from the host OS unless we configure port forwarding. This is doable, but we can make things easier on ourselves by using VirtualBox’s host-only networking option to create a private network between the host machine running VirtualBox and the guest machine running inside of VirtualBox.

Configuring adapter settings

First, we go to the “File” menu and select the “Host Network Manager” tab. Double-click the network listed and set the IPv4 address to 192.168.99.1. If there’s a different value in this box, change it to this new value to follow along with the rest of the course. And if there’s no network defined, press the “Create” button to add one.