Configure a global network firewall policy to enable ingress traffic

In a custom Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) network with multiple subnets, by default, egress traffic is allowed, but ingress traffic is denied. To enable ingress traffic and allow VM instances in different subnets to communicate with each other, you can create a global network firewall policy in Cloud Next Generation Firewall on the VPC network, which allows ingress traffic from a specific IP address range of the subnet.

This tutorial describes how to configure a global network firewall policy to allow internal traffic between VM subnets in a custom VPC network.

Objectives

This tutorial shows you how to complete the following tasks:

  • Create a custom VPC network with two subnets.
  • Create two Linux VM instances (a client VM and a server VM) without external IP addresses in separate subnets of the VPC network.
  • Create a Cloud Router and a Cloud NAT gateway as a best practice to download software packages.
  • Install the Apache server on the server VM.
  • Create a global network firewall policy with the following rules:
    • Allow egress traffic to any destination.
    • Enable firewall logging.
    • Use Identity-Aware Proxy (IAP) to allow SSH connectivity to the VMs.
    • Allow the client VM to connect to the server VM running the Apache server.
  • Test the connection.

The following diagram shows the flow of the traffic between subnets of a custom VPC network after a global network firewall policy allows internal ingress traffic.

A global network firewall policy allowing ingress traffic from a subnet in a custom VPC network.
A global network firewall policy allowing ingress traffic from a subnet in a custom VPC network (click to enlarge).

Before you begin

  1. Sign in to your Google Cloud account. If you're new to Google Cloud, create an account to evaluate how our products perform in real-world scenarios. New customers also get $300 in free credits to run, test, and deploy workloads.

  2. In the Google Cloud console, on the project selector page, select or create a Google Cloud project.

    Go to project selector

  3. Make sure that billing is enabled for your Google Cloud project.

  4. In the Google Cloud console, on the project selector page, select or create a Google Cloud project.

    Go to project selector

  5. Make sure that billing is enabled for your Google Cloud project.

  6. Enable the Compute Engine API for your project.
  7. Make sure that you have the Compute Network Admin (roles/compute.networkAdmin) Identity and Access Management role.
  8. If you prefer to work from the command line, install the Google Cloud CLI. For the conceptual and installation information about the tool, see gcloud CLI overview.

    Note: If you haven't run the Google Cloud CLI previously, first run gcloud init to initialize your gcloud CLI directory.

Create a custom VPC network with subnets

In this section, you create a custom mode VPC network with two IPv4 subnets.

Console

  1. In the Google Cloud console, go to the VPC networks page.

    Go to VPC networks

  2. Click Create VPC network.

  3. For Name, enter vpc-fw-rules.

  4. For Description, enter VPC network for the firewall rules tutorial.

  5. For Subnet creation mode, select Custom.

  6. In the New subnet section, specify the following configuration parameters for a subnet:

    • Name: subnet-fw-rules-server
    • Region: us-central1 (Iowa)
    • IPv4 range: 10.0.0.0/24
    • Private Google Access: On

  7. Click Done.

  8. Click Add subnet and specify the following configuration parameters:

    • Name: subnet-fw-rules-client
    • Region: us-central1 (Iowa)
    • IPv4 range: 192.168.10.0/24
    • Private Google Access: On

  9. Click Done.

  10. Scroll down and click Create.

gcloud

  1. To create a VPC network, run the following command:

    gcloud compute networks create vpc-fw-rules \
  --subnet-mode=custom \
  --description="VPC network for the firewall rules tutorial"

  2. Optional: In the Authorize cloud shell dialog, click Authorize.

  3. To create a subnet, run the following command:

    gcloud compute networks subnets create subnet-fw-rules-server \
  --network=vpc-fw-rules \
  --region=us-central1 \
  --range=10.0.0.0/24 \
  --enable-private-ip-google-access

  4. To create another subnet, run the following command:

    gcloud compute networks subnets create subnet-fw-rules-client \
  --network=vpc-fw-rules \
  --region=us-central1 \
  --range=192.168.10.0/24 \
  --enable-private-ip-google-access

By default, the VPC network has two implied IPv4 rules:

  • An allow egress rule with destination 0.0.0.0/0 and lowest possible priority (65535) that allows any instance to send traffic to any destination, except for traffic blocked by Google Cloud.
  • A deny ingress with source 0.0.0.0/0 and lowest possible priority (65535) that protects all instances by blocking incoming connections to them.

For more information, see Implied rules.

Create client and server VMs

In this section, you create two Linux VMs without external IP addresses in the subnets of the VPC network you created in the previous section.

Create the server VM

Console

To create the server VM, follow these steps:

  1. In the Google Cloud console, go to the Create an instance page.

    Go to Create an instance

  2. For Name, enter vm-fw-rules-server.

  3. For Region, select us-central1 (Iowa).

  4. Scroll down and expand Advanced options, and then expand Networking.

  5. In the Network interfaces section, specify the following configuration parameters:

    • Network: vpc-fw-rules
    • Subnetwork: subnet-fw-rules-server IPv4 (10.0.0.0/24)
    • External IPv4 address: None

  6. Click Done.

  7. Click Create.

gcloud

To create the server VM, run the following command:

gcloud compute instances create vm-fw-rules-server \
    --network=vpc-fw-rules \
    --zone=us-central1-a \
    --subnet=subnet-fw-rules-server \
    --stack-type=IPV4_ONLY \
    --no-address

Create the client VM

Console

To create the client VM, follow these steps:

  1. In the Google Cloud console, go to the Create an instance page.

    Go to Create an instance

  2. For Name, enter vm-fw-rules-client.

  3. For Region, select us-central1 (Iowa).

  4. Scroll down and expand Advanced options, and then expand Networking.

  5. In the Network interfaces section, specify the following configuration parameters:

    • Network: vpc-fw-rules
    • Subnetwork: subnet-fw-rules-client IPv4 (192.168.10.0/24)
    • External IPv4 address: None

  6. Click Done.

  7. Click Create.

gcloud

To create the client VM, run the following command:

gcloud compute instances create vm-fw-rules-client \
    --network=vpc-fw-rules \
    --zone=us-central1-a \
    --subnet=subnet-fw-rules-client \
    --stack-type=IPV4_ONLY \
    --no-address

Create a Cloud Router and a Cloud NAT gateway

In the previous section, you created two Linux VMs without public IPv4 addresses. To allow those VMs to access the public internet, you create a Cloud Router and a Cloud NAT gateway.

Console

  1. In the Google Cloud console, go to the Cloud NAT page.

    Go to Cloud NAT

  2. Click Get started or Create Cloud NAT gateway.

  3. For Gateway name, enter gateway-fw-rules.

  4. For NAT type, select Public.

  5. In the Select Cloud Router section, specify the following configuration parameters:

    • Network: vpc-fw-rules
    • Region: us-central1
    • Cloud Router: Create new router.
      1. For Name, enter router-fw-rules.
      2. Click Create.

  6. Click Create.

gcloud

  1. To create a Cloud Router, run the following command:

    gcloud compute routers create router-fw-rules \
  --network=vpc-fw-rules \
  --region=us-central1

  2. To create a Cloud NAT gateway, run the following command:

    gcloud compute routers nats create gateway-fw-rules \
  --router=router-fw-rules \
  --region=us-central1 \
  --auto-allocate-nat-external-ips \
  --nat-all-subnet-ip-ranges

Create a global network firewall policy

In this section, you create a global network firewall policy with the following:

  • An egress rule with 0.0.0.0./0 as the destination.

  • Logging enabled. Firewall Rules Logging lets you audit, verify, and analyze the effects of your firewall rules.

Console

  1. In the Google Cloud console, go to the Firewall policies page.

    Go to Firewall policies

  2. Click Create firewall policy.

  3. In the Configure policy section, for Policy name, enter fw-policy.

  4. For Deployment scope, select Global and click Continue.

  5. To create rules for your policy, in the Add rules section, click Add rule.

    1. For Priority, enter 65534.
    2. For Direction of traffic, select Egress.
    3. For Logs, select On.
    4. In the Target section, for Target type, select All instances in the network.
    5. In the Destination section, for IP ranges, enter 0.0.0.0/0.
    6. In the Protocol and ports section, select Allow all.
    7. Click Create.

  6. Click Continue.

  7. To associate a VPC network with the policy, in the Associate policy with VPC networks section, click Associate.

  8. Select the checkbox of vpc-fw-rules and click Associate.

  9. Click Continue.

  10. Click Create.

gcloud

  1. To create a firewall policy, run the following command:

    gcloud compute network-firewall-policies create fw-policy \
    --global

  2. To create a firewall rule that allows traffic to all destinations and enables logs, run the following command:

    gcloud compute network-firewall-policies rules create 65534 \
    --firewall-policy=fw-policy \
    --direction=EGRESS \
    --action=ALLOW \
    --dest-ip-ranges=0.0.0.0/0 \
    --layer4-configs=all \
    --global-firewall-policy \
    --enable-logging

  3. To associate the firewall policy with the VPC network, run the following command:

    gcloud compute network-firewall-policies associations create \
    --firewall-policy=fw-policy \
    --network=vpc-fw-rules \
    --name=pol-association-fw-rules \
    --global-firewall-policy

Add a firewall rule for IAP

In the previous section, you created Linux VMs without external IP addresses. In this section, you enable Identity-Aware Proxy (IAP) to allow administrative access to the VM instances that don't have external IP addresses.

To allow IAP to connect to your VM instances, create a firewall rule that:

  • applies to all VM instances that you want to be accessible by using IAP.
  • allows ingress traffic from the IP range 35.235.240.0/20. This range contains all IP addresses that IAP uses for TCP forwarding.
  • allows connections to all ports that you want to be accessible by using IAP TCP forwarding, for example, port 22 for SSH and port 3389 for RDP.

Console

To allow RDP and SSH access to all VM instances in the vpc-fw-rules network, do the following:

  1. In the Google Cloud console, go to the Firewall policies page.

    Go to Firewall policies

  2. In the Network firewall policies section, click fw-policy.

  3. Click Create rule.

  4. For Priority, enter 500.

  5. For Direction of traffic, select Ingress.

  6. For Logs, select On.

  7. In the Target section, for Target type, select All instances in the network.

  8. In the Source section, for IP ranges, enter 35.235.240.0/20.

  9. In the Protocols and ports section, select Specified protocols and ports.

  10. Select the TCP checkbox, and for Ports, enter 22 and 3389 separated by a comma.

  11. Click Create.

gcloud

To allow RDP and SSH access to all VM instances in the vpc-fw-rules network, run the following command:

gcloud compute network-firewall-policies rules create 500 \
    --firewall-policy=fw-policy \
    --direction=INGRESS \
    --action=ALLOW \
    --src-ip-ranges=35.235.240.0/20 \
    --global-firewall-policy \
    --layer4-configs tcp:22,tcp:3389 \
    --enable-logging

Install the Apache server

In this section, you install the Apache server on the server VM.

  1. In the Google Cloud console, go to the VM instances page.

    Go to VM instances

  2. In the Connect column of the vm-fw-rules-server VM, click SSH.

  3. In the SSH-in-browser dialog, click Authorize and wait for the connection to establish.

  4. To install the apache2 package, at the command prompt, run the following command:

    sudo apt update && sudo apt -y install apache2

    After installing Apache, the operating system automatically starts the Apache server.

  5. To verify that Apache is running, run the following command:

    sudo systemctl status apache2 --no-pager

  6. To overwrite the Apache web server default web page, run the following command:

    echo '<!doctype html><html><body><h1>Hello World!</h1></body></html>' | sudo tee /var/www/html/index.html

  7. Close the SSH-in-browser dialog.

Test the connection

After installing the Apache server on the server VM, connect to the server VM from the client VM using the internal IP address of the server VM.

  1. In the Google Cloud console, go to the VM instances page.

    Go to VM instances

  2. From the Internal IP column of the vm-fw-rules-server VM, copy the internal IP address of the VM.

  3. In the Connect column of the vm-fw-rules-client VM, click SSH.

  4. In the SSH-in-browser dialog, click Authorize and wait for the connection to establish.

  5. To verify the connection, run the following command:

    curl INTERNAL_IP -m 2

    Replace INTERNAL_IP with the IP address of the vm-fw-rules-server VM.

    The Connection timed out message is expected because every VM creates an implicit ingress firewall rule that denies all traffic. To allow traffic, you add an ingress rule to the firewall policy.

  6. Close the SSH-in-browser dialog.

Update the global network firewall policy to allow internal traffic

In this section, you update the global network firewall policy to allow internal traffic from the subnet of the client VM.

Console

  1. In the Google Cloud console, go to the Firewall policies page.

    Go to Firewall policies

  2. In the Network firewall policies section, click fw-policy.

  3. Click Create rule.

  4. For Priority, enter 501.

  5. For Direction of traffic, select Ingress.

  6. For Logs, select On.

  7. In the Target section, for Target type, select All instances in the network.

  8. In the Source section, for IP ranges, enter 192.168.10.0/24.

    Remember, the IP range 192.168.10.0/24 is assigned to subnet-fw-rules-client.

  9. In the Destination section, for IP type, select IPv4. In IP ranges, specify 10.0.0.0/24.

    Remember, the IP range 10.0.0.0/24 is assigned to subnet-fw-rules-server.

  10. Click Create.

gcloud

To update the firewall policy, run the following command:

gcloud compute network-firewall-policies rules create 501 \
    --firewall-policy=fw-policy \
    --direction=INGRESS \
    --action=ALLOW \
    --src-ip-ranges=192.168.10.0/24 \
    --dest-ip-ranges=10.0.0.0/24 \
    --layer4-configs=all \
    --global-firewall-policy \
    --enable-logging

Test the connection

After creating the firewall policy, connect to the server VM from the client VM using the internal IP address of the server VM.

  1. In the Google Cloud console, go to the VM instances page.

    Go to VM instances

  2. From the Internal IP column of the vm-fw-rules-server VM, copy the internal IP address of the VM.

  3. In the Connect column of the vm-fw-rules-client VM, click SSH.

  4. In the SSH-in-browser dialog, click Authorize and wait for the connection to establish.

  5. To verify the connection, run the following command:

    curl INTERNAL_IP -m 2

    Replace INTERNAL_IP with the IP address of the vm-fw-rules-server VM.

    The expected message is <!doctype html><html><body><h1>Hello World!</h1></body></html>.

  6. Close the SSH-in-browser dialog.

To view firewall logs, see View logs.

Clean up

To avoid incurring charges to your Google Cloud account for the resources used in this tutorial, either delete the project that contains the resources, or keep the project and delete the individual resources.

In this section, you delete the resources created in this tutorial.

Delete the firewall policy

Console

  1. In the Google Cloud console, go to the Firewall policies page.

    Go to Firewall policies

  2. In the Network firewall policies section, click the fw-policy name.

  3. Click the Associations tab.

  4. Select the checkbox of vpc-fw-rules and click Remove association.

  5. In the Remove a firewall policy association dialog, click Remove.

  6. Next to the fw-policy title, click Delete.

  7. In the Delete a firewall policy dialog, click Delete.

    After a policy is deleted, the Google Cloud console shows the Firewall policies page.

gcloud

  1. Remove the association between the firewall policy and the VPC network.

    gcloud compute network-firewall-policies associations delete \
  --name=pol-association-fw-rules \
  --firewall-policy=fw-policy \
  --global-firewall-policy

    If you set up the association between the firewall policy and the VPC network through Google Cloud console, don't use the gcloud CLI command to remove the association. If you can't remember how you created the association or get the The network firewall policy does not have an association with pol-association-fw-rules. error when you run the command, use the Google Cloud console to remove the association.

  2. Delete the firewall policy.

    gcloud compute network-firewall-policies delete fw-policy \
    --global

Delete the VMs

Console

  1. In the Google Cloud console, go to the VM instances page.

    Go to VM instances

  2. Select the checkboxes of vm-fw-rules-client and vm-fw-rules-server VMs.

  3. Click Delete.

  4. In the Delete 2 instances? dialog, click Delete.

gcloud

To delete vm-fw-rules-client and vm-fw-rules-server VMs, run the following command:

gcloud compute instances delete vm-fw-rules-client vm-fw-rules-server \
    --zone=us-central1-a

When prompted, press Y to confirm, and then press Enter.

Delete the Cloud NAT gateway and Cloud Router

Console

  1. In the Google Cloud console, go to the Cloud routers page.

    Go to Cloud routers

  2. Select the router-fw-rules checkbox.

  3. Click Delete.

  4. In the Delete router-fw-rules dialog, click Delete.

When you delete a Cloud Router, the associated Cloud NAT gateway is also deleted.

gcloud

To delete the router-fw-rules Cloud Router, run the following command:

gcloud compute routers delete router-fw-rules \
    --region=us-central1

When prompted, press Y to confirm, and then press Enter.

When you delete a Cloud Router, the associated Cloud NAT gateway is also deleted.

Delete the VPC network and its subnets

Console

  1. In the Google Cloud console, go to the VPC networks page.

    Go to VPC networks

  2. In the Name column, click vpc-fw-rules.

  3. Click Delete VPC network.

  4. In the Delete a network dialog, click Delete.

When you delete a VPC, its subnets are also deleted.

gcloud

  1. To delete the subnets of the vpc-fw-rules VPC network, run the following command:

    gcloud compute networks subnets delete subnet-fw-rules-client subnet-fw-rules-server \
    --region=us-central1

    When prompted, press Y to confirm and press Enter.

  2. To delete the vpc-fw-rules VPC network, run the following command:

    gcloud compute networks delete vpc-fw-rules

    When prompted, press Y to confirm, and then press Enter.