How to set up NAT with Vagrant

Question

I am currently running the most recent version of Vagrant with the VMWare Workstation Provider addin (though I don't think the second part is relevant). I am looking to run webservers for my development work (i.e. NGINX or Rails Server) so that I can access them through an IP (Or DNS Spoofed Domain name) from the host machine, which is windows 8 right now. In my current setup, it assigns a 192.168.xxx.xxx IP address that I cannot access from outside the guest machine. My current Vagrantfile:

# -*- mode: ruby -*-
# vi: set ft=ruby :

# Vagrantfile API/syntax version. Don't touch unless you know what you're doing!
VAGRANTFILE_API_VERSION = "2"

Vagrant.configure(VAGRANTFILE_API_VERSION) do |config|
  # All Vagrant configuration is done here. The most common configuration
  # options are documented and commented below. For a complete reference,
  # please see the online documentation at vagrantup.com.

  # Every Vagrant virtual environment requires a box to build off of.
  config.vm.box = "vmwsbox"

  # The url from where the 'config.vm.box' box will be fetched if it
  # doesn't already exist on the user's system.
  # config.vm.box_url = "http://domain.com/path/to/above.box"

  # Create a forwarded port mapping which allows access to a specific port
  # within the machine from a port on the host machine. In the example below,
  # accessing "localhost:8080" will access port 80 on the guest machine.
  # config.vm.network :forwarded_port, guest: 80, host: 8080

  # Create a private network, which allows host-only access to the machine
  # using a specific IP.
  #config.vm.network "public_netwok"

  # Create a public network, which generally matched to bridged network.
  # Bridged networks make the machine appear as another physical device on
  # your network.
  config.vm.network :public_network

  # If true, then any SSH connections made will enable agent forwarding.
  # Default value: false
  # config.ssh.forward_agent = true

  # Share an additional folder to the guest VM. The first argument is
  # the path on the host to the actual folder. The second argument is
  # the path on the guest to mount the folder. And the optional third
  # argument is a set of non-required options.
  # config.vm.synced_folder "../data", "/vagrant_data"

  # Provider-specific configuration so you can fine-tune various
  # backing providers for Vagrant. These expose provider-specific options.
  # Example for VirtualBox:
  #
  # config.vm.provider :virtualbox do |vb|
  #   # Don't boot with headless mode
  #   vb.gui = true
  #
  #   # Use VBoxManage to customize the VM. For example to change memory:
  #   vb.customize ["modifyvm", :id, "--memory", "1024"]
  # end
  #
  # View the documentation for the provider you're using for more
  # information on available options.

  # Enable provisioning with Puppet stand alone.  Puppet manifests
  # are contained in a directory path relative to this Vagrantfile.
  # You will need to create the manifests directory and a manifest in
  # the file vmwsbox.pp in the manifests_path directory.
  #
  # An example Puppet manifest to provision the message of the day:
  #
  # # group { "puppet":
  # #   ensure => "present",
  # # }
  # #
  # # File { owner => 0, group => 0, mode => 0644 }
  # #
  # # file { '/etc/motd':
  # #   content => "Welcome to your Vagrant-built virtual machine!
  # #               Managed by Puppet.\n"
  # # }
  #
  # config.vm.provision :puppet do |puppet|
  #   puppet.manifests_path = "manifests"
  #   puppet.manifest_file  = "site.pp"
  # end

  # Enable provisioning with chef solo, specifying a cookbooks path, roles
  # path, and data_bags path (all relative to this Vagrantfile), and adding
  # some recipes and/or roles.
  #
  # config.vm.provision :chef_solo do |chef|
  #   chef.cookbooks_path = "../my-recipes/cookbooks"
  #   chef.roles_path = "../my-recipes/roles"
  #   chef.data_bags_path = "../my-recipes/data_bags"
  #   chef.add_recipe "mysql"
  #   chef.add_role "web"
  #
  #   # You may also specify custom JSON attributes:
  #   chef.json = { :mysql_password => "foo" }
  # end

  # Enable provisioning with chef server, specifying the chef server URL,
  # and the path to the validation key (relative to this Vagrantfile).
  #
  # The Opscode Platform uses HTTPS. Substitute your organization for
  # ORGNAME in the URL and validation key.
  #
  # If you have your own Chef Server, use the appropriate URL, which may be
  # HTTP instead of HTTPS depending on your configuration. Also change the
  # validation key to validation.pem.
  #
  # config.vm.provision :chef_client do |chef|
  #   chef.chef_server_url = "https://api.opscode.com/organizations/ORGNAME"
  #   chef.validation_key_path = "ORGNAME-validator.pem"
  # end
  #
  # If you're using the Opscode platform, your validator client is
  # ORGNAME-validator, replacing ORGNAME with your organization name.
  #
  # If you have your own Chef Server, the default validation client name is
  # chef-validator, unless you changed the configuration.
  #
  #   chef.validation_client_name = "ORGNAME-validator"
end

Answer 1

Assuming you have security controls in place, you can assign your box a static IP Address on a public network as well:

   config.vm.network :private_network, ip: "192.168.33.10"

Answer 2

I highly discourage you to run VM's over the public network. The reason is that Vagrant ships out with a default SSH key. This basically means that if you open up your VM's to the outside world anyone can SSH into it and get root acces.

You can find more information here and here about this security issue