How to Allow External Connections to Your Server on Oracle Cloud (Step-by-Step Guide)

Recently, I had to configure my server on Oracle Cloud. I had previously configured ports 443 and 80 for HTTPS traffic, but this time I needed to allow incoming connections on port 9093 for Kafka.

Naturally, I forgot how I had done this a year ago—because, of course, who remembers such things after that long? So I did what anyone would do: started Googling all over again.

I figured this would be the simplest way to keep track of documentation I might need later—so here we are. This is a quick, no-nonsense guide for future-me (and maybe even future-you) on how to allow external traffic to a specific port on an Oracle Cloud VPS.

1. Open Oracle Cloud Console

   

2. Go to VCN

   

3. Select the VCN in which the current server is configured.

   

4. Select the subnet in which the current server is configured.

   

5. Select the Default Security List for vcn-name , where vcn-name would be the name of your VCN.

   

6. Click on Add Ingress Rules and enter the following:

   Source CIDR : 0.0.0.0/0 (allow all)

   Destination Port Range : 9093

   IP Protocol : TCP

   Description : Kafka ( or anything you would like to write so that you remember which service you have reserved the port for )

   

   

7. Now Log on to your Server using SSH and Allow port 9093 to accept TCP Connections on port 9093 on the Firewall. (Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Ubuntu Installations use iptables by default )

sudo iptables -A INPUT -p tcp --dport 9093 -j ACCEPT