Technology

Cloud NAT

Cloud NAT is a fully managed, software-defined service that provides outbound internet connectivity for resources without external IP addresses.

Cloud NAT eliminates the need for individual public IP addresses by providing a secure, scalable gateway for outbound traffic. Built on Google's Andromeda software-defined networking, it avoids the performance bottlenecks of traditional proxy VMs or physical appliances. The service supports Compute Engine VMs, GKE clusters, and serverless environments like Cloud Run through VPC Access. Operators can choose between manual IP assignment for strict whitelisting or auto-allocation for effortless scaling. With a 99.99% availability SLA and support for up to 32 VM instances per basic gateway (scaling significantly higher in standard configurations), it ensures reliable connectivity for updates and API calls without exposing internal workloads to unsolicited inbound threats.