I have the distinct pleasure of having been invited to speak at the Extra Evening December MC2MC user group. It is on the 17th of December 2020. This will be my final live and virtual event for the year 2020!
For the occasion I will be giving a talk to introduce you to Azure Virtual WAN and why this is really for everyone. You might not think so yet, but I am sure you will see where the future of Azure networking is heading, and why.
Azure Virtual WAN for everyone
Register, it is free!
So, join us. The event is free, but for your time, but we hope you learn something. You can register on the MC2MC website for this event
Register, it is free and you learn something!
My talk starts at 18:45 and after that session they have some more great sessions by fellow MVPs lined up.
Agenda
18h30 – 18u45: Welcome
Azure Virtual WAN for everyone
18h45 – 19u30: Azure Virtual WAN for everyone by Didier Van Hoye (Microsoft MVP Cloud and Datacenter Management). We’ll look at what Azure Virtual WAN is, why you would use it, and what its “state of the union” is at the time of speaking. We will look at why small and medium enterprises should also adopt it as Azure Virtual WAN is for everyone, not just the global fortune 500. We’ll touch on how to use Azure Firewall Manager with Azure Virtual WAN HUB and show you the custom route tables along with some examples.
Offensive Azure Security
19h30 – 20h15: Offensive Azure Security by Sergey Chubarov (Microsoft MVP Azure). These days, working with a cloud platform is already commonplace. Companies choose Microsoft Azure for a number of benefits, including security. But there are some responsibility on the customer side and that’s may become weakest link in the chain. A demo-based session shows attacks on the weakest link. Penetration testers and red teamers will find steps that can be used in their assessments, defenders will get ideas on what should be protected. The session includes: – Bypassing authentication & MFA – Getting control over Compute – Extracting secrets – Pentesting Azure AD Connect
20h15 – 20h25: Break
I know what you did last project
20h25 – 21h15: I know what you did last project (common mistakes we make in Azure) by Mustafa Toroman (Microsoft MVP Azure). One of major benefits of Microsoft Azure is vast number of services we can choose from. But huge amount of services can create problems like what service to choose in specific situations or what to avoid. Do we select IaaS or PaaS? Or maybe go serverless? What type of database do we choose? Azure SQL, Managed Instance, or something else? And when to go with Azure Cosmos DB? Based on years of experience and hundreds of projects, this session shares do’s and don’ts when designing your solutions in Azure. Avoid usual traps and create rock solid applications in cloud!
Azure DevOps for Ops without Dev
21h15 – 22h00: Azure DevOps for Ops without Dev by Vukašin Terzić (Microsoft MVP Azure). DevOps philosophy doesn’t really apply to non-developers who are not creating and releasing new versions of applications every week. Or does it? In this session, I will talk about how to leverage Azure DevOps tools to boost your productivity and project management and how to save and execute your scripts and ARM templates.
22h00 – 23h00: Social BYOB (Bring-Your-Own-Beer) teams meeting
I hope to see you there and I wish you all a festive period to end 2020 and start 2021.
GeekSprech(EN) Podcast Episode 50 – Azure Virtual WAN
Yes, 2020 can end well. I was on GeekSprech(EN) Podcast Episode 50 – Azure Virtual WAN! I had the distinct pleasure of being invited to join Eric Berg on the GeekSprech (Geek Speak) Podcast. That invitation came times perfectly to have me on episode 50, which is kind of cool right?
GeekSprech(EN) Podcast Episode 50 – Azure Virtual WAN
In GeekSprech(EN) Podcast Episode 50 – Azure Virtual WAN we have an informal chat about, you guessed it, Azure Virtual WAN. While this a very rich and rewarding subject, that I like very much, I was wondering how this would go. You see there is just so much to tell, so many links to make, and relations to show between all the moving parts this subject normally leads to a lot of whiteboarding.
Podcasting and whiteboarding don’t mix, so we just talk, but I must say the time flew by. I had fun and just chatting informally with a fellow geek was just so much fun. For those of you reading this in the future, we are in lockdown 2 of over 8 months of the Corona/Covid-19 global pandemic. So having a talk over a drink at a conference or user group is just not happing right now.
More podcast on the horizon?
Are there more podcasts in my future? Well yes, probably so. This was my first ever podcast and I hope you like it. We had fun doing making it. Frankly it does taste like more and next year, if all goes well we’ll be doing some podcasting with a very smart fellow Belgian technologists about. We think that will be both fun and educational. The basis for those podcast plans are chats and discussion we have on technologies amongst our selves. But for now, you can join in the fun right here. Enjoy!
Last week, around August 26-27th 2020 Custom Route Tables in Azure Virtual WAN lit up in my Azure Tenants. Awesome news. Normally this should have happened the week of the 3d of August 2020. However, some delay happened. Now it is here is has come in silence. Which I find odd. This is a major capability that offers so much of what we need to make Azure Virtual WAN shine. But it is here, ready to shine at Microsoft Ignite
Watch my video on custom route tables in Azure virtual WAN
Custom Route Tables in Azure Virtual WAN
What do we have now? You can read up on Azure Virtual WAN route tables over here. I have made a video about all this which you can find on my blog and on my Vimeo channel. Please take a look for some walkthroughs and links to some other blog posts by me on Azure Virtual WAN.
LabELs
First of all, let’s discuss the labels. Labels logically group route tables. These are very helpful when propagating routes from connections to multiple route tables. The Default Route Table has a built-in label called ‘Default’. When you propagate connection routes to the ‘Default’ label, it automatically applies to all the Default Route Tables across every hub in the Virtual WAN.
Creating a label
Associations
Now, we can discuss associations. Each connection is associated with one route table. This means that the connection can send to the destination indicated as routes in the route table it is associated with. The routing configuration of the connection will show the associated route table. This is very important for connected VNETs. Multiple connections can be associated with the same route table. Note that all VPN, ExpressRoute, and User VPN connections are associated with the same (default) route table.
Association
By default, all connections are associated with the Default route table in a virtual hub. Each virtual hub has its own Default route table. You can add one or more static routes to the default Route table. Static routes take precedence over dynamically learned routes for the same prefixes.
Propagations
Last but not least, connections dynamically propagate routes to one or more route table. VPN, ExpressRoute, and User VPN connections propagate routes to the same set of route tables. With connections like a Site-2-Site VPN, Express Route, or Point-2-Site VPN, routes are propagated from the virtual hub to the on-premises router using BGP.
Propagations for BranchesPropagation for a connected VNET
A “None” route table is also available for each virtual hub. Propagating to the None route table implies that no routes are propagated from the connection.
Some need to ask
Finally, some customers need to reach out to support in order to get Azure Virtual WAN Custom route tables to light up.
Contact Microsoft support if and when needed to enable custom route tables for you.
As a result, I suggest you do so to start kicking the tires and then dive in deeper. This is a cornerstone technology for Azure networking going forward.
Automation
I have not found any documentation or guidance in regards to automation with PowerShell, Azure CLI, or ARM templates yet. I expect this to be forthcoming as this is much needed. As a result, I hope we’ll see this by Microsft Ignite 2020.
Conclusion
Azure Virtual WAN with the secured Virtual Hub and custom route tables offers the capabilities we have been waiting for. With these capabilities in place. Azure Virtual WAN is the future of Azure virtual networking. Therefore, I fully expect to hear a lot more about it during Microsoft Ignite in September. I personally will focus on this part of networking in the coming months. It is a stock part of any Azure initiative and project in the near future.
When it comes to Azure Virtual WAN, you might have the impression it is only useful for huge, international entities. Entities like the big Fortune 500 companies, with a significant, distributed global presence.
I can understand why. That is where the attention is going, and it makes for excellent examples to showcase. Also, the emphasis with SD-WAN has too often been about such cases. SD-WAN also enables economically feasible, reliable, and redundant connectivity for smaller locations and companies than ever before. My take is that Azure Virtual WAN is for everyone!
Azure Virtual WAN is for everyone
I would also like to emphasize that Azure Virtual WAN is so much more than just SD-WAN. That does not distract from SD-WAN’s value. SD-WAN is a crucial aspect of it in terms of connectivity to and from your Azure environment. I would even say that the ability to leverage Microsoft’s global network via Azure Virtual WAN is the most significant force multiplier that SD-WAN has gotten in the past year.
Network appliance vendors are signing on to integrate with Azure Virtual WAN for a good reason. It makes sense to leverage one of the biggest, best, and fastest global networks in the world to provide connectivity for your customers.
One extreme use case would be to use Azure Virtual WAN only as an SD-WAN carrier just to connect your sites without using anything in Azure. An example of this would be a business that is still on-prem but wants to move to Azure. That is a good start. It modernizes connectivity between the locations while becoming ready to move workloads to Azure, where the landing zone is integrated into Azure Virtual WAN when it is time to do so.
A Medium Enterprise example
But let’s step back a minute. The benefits of Azure Virtual WAN go beyond SD-WAN deployments for multinational companies spanning the globe. Make no mistake about this. SD-WAN is also very interesting for Small and Medium Enterprises (SME), and the benefits of Azure Virtual WAN go beyond on-premises to Azure connectivity. It extends to connecting any location to any location.
SD-WAN leveraging Azure Virtual WAN and the Microsoft Global Network
On-premises connectivity is more than a data center, a corporate HQ, and branch offices with ExpressRoute and/or Site-to-Site VPN (S2S). It is also a user via a Point-to-Site VPN (P2S). All of these can be anywhere in the world but also distributed across your city, country, or continent. Think about what that means for “remote work by default” shops. Every individual, whether working with you as an employee, partner, customer, consultant or contractor, can be connected to your Azure virtual WAN and your on-premises locations thanks to the any-to-any connectivity.
Some people might have an NGFW at home, depending on their role and needs. Many others will be fine with a point-to-site VPN, which serves both work-from-home profiles as well as road warriors.
People, if this Coronavirus global pandemic has not awakened you to this importance and possibility of remote work, I do not know what to tell you. Drink a lot more coffee?
For example, a national retailer, a school, a medical provider with lots of small local presences can all benefit from Azure Virtual WAN. When they merge with others, within or across the borders, Azure Virtual WAN with SD-WAN puts them in a great position to extend and integrate their network.
There is more to Azure Virtual WAN than SD-WAN
We have not touched on the other benefits Azure Virtual WAN brings. These benefits are there, even if you have no on-premises locations to connect. That would be another extreme, Azure Virtual WAN without any SD-WAN deployment. While the on-premises deployment of apps goes down over time, it will not go ways 100% for everyone. Also, even in a 100% cloud-native environment, having other connectivity options than over the internet and public services can help with security, speed, and cost reduction.
The Any-to-Any capabilities, the ease of use, leading to operational cost saving, are game-changing. Combined with the integration with Azure Firewall manager to create a Secure Virtual HUB and custom routing, it makes for a very flexible way of securing and managing network access and security.
Hybrid scenarios
Don’t think that SMEs will only have 2 to 5 subscriptions, or even less if they are just consumers of cloud services outsourced to a service provider, with one or a couple of vNETs.
If you do not have many subscriptions, you can still have a lot of vNETs. You create vNETs per application, business unit, etc. On top of that, in many cases, you will have development, testing, acceptance, and production environments for these applications.
You might very well do what we do, and what we see more of again, lots of subscriptions. You can create subscriptions for every application environment, business unit, etc. The benefits are clear and easy to measure distinction in ownership, responsibilities, costs, and security. That means a company can have dozens to hundreds of subscriptions that way. These can all have multiple vNETs. When an SME wants to protect itself against downtime, two regions come into play. That means that the hub-to-hub transitive nature excels.
Azure Virtual WAN – Hybrid scenario
Now, managing VNET peering, transit vNETs, Network Gateways, Firewalls, and route tables all become a bit of a chore fast when the environment grows. Rolling all that work into a convenient, centralized virtual global service makes sense to reduce complexity, reduce operational costs, and simplify your network architecture and design.
Going cloud first and cloud native
In a later stage, your organization can reduce its on-premises footprint and go for an all cloud-based approach. Be realistic, there might very well be needs for some on-premises solutions but Azure Stack has you covered there. You can leverage Azure Stack HCI, Edge, or even hub or those needs but still integrate deployment, management, operations, and monitoring into Azure.
Azure Virtual WAM – Cloud first scenario
Global Transit Architecture with Azure Virtual WAN
I still need to drive the capabilities and benefits of the Global Transit Architecture with Azure Virtual WAN home for you. For one, it is any-to-any by default. You can control and limit this where needed, but it works automagically for you out of the box. Second, this is true for ExpressRoute, S2S VPN, P2S VPN, VNET peers, and virtual hubs in all directions.
Branch-to-VNet
Branch-to-branch
ExpressRoute Global Reach and Virtual WAN
Remote User-to-VNet
Remote User-to-branch
VNet-to-VNet
Branch-to-hub-hub-to-Branch
Branch-to-hub-hub-to-VNet
VNet-to-hub-hub-to-VNet
This means that a user with a P2S VPN connected to a virtual hub has access to a datacenter that connects to that same hub or another one within the same Virtual WAN. You can go crisscross all over the place. I love it. Remember that we can secure this, control this.
Any-to-Any – crisscross along locations and connection types – Image adapted from MSFT
Think about that for a moment. When I am on the road connected via a P2S VPN to an azure virtual hub, I can reach my datacenter (ExpressRoute), my office, store, factory, and potentially even my home office (S2S VPN). Next to that, I can reach all my vNETs. It is the same deal when I am working from home or in the office, store, or factory. That is impressive. The default is any-to-any, automagically done for you. But you can restrict and secure this to your needs with custom routing and a secure virtual hub (Azure Firewall Manager).
Conclusion
The benefits of Azure Virtual WAN are plenty, for many scenarios in large, medium and small enterprises. So, I invite you to take a better look. I did. As a result, I have been investing time in diving into its possibilities and potential. I will be presenting on this topic to share my insights into what, to me, is the future of Azure networking. Do not think this is only for the biggest corporations or organizations.
