A great new feature in VirtualBox 4.0 is the ability to use NAT networking and forward ports without needing to use ssh -L/-R tricks.  This is great for booting multiple VM domains simultaneously.  It is possible to have several instances which map back to the host machine and different ports on localhost:* automatically forward to the correct VM.  This avoids the hassle of setting up dns entries or static IP addresses.



In this example, I'm mapping the host ports 3xxxx to the VM's well known server ports.

Note: It is important to setup the Frontend HTTP host/port to avoid incorrect URL rewriting.



You may also need to setup an http channel to deal with local traffic which uses the network address 10.0.2.15

Happy VMing.