ExpressRoute multi-region: triangles or squares?
The square design in ExpressRoute is not a recommended practice, but it can mean savings in ExpressRoute costs of up to 90%.
Tag: expressroute
ExpressRoute traffic visibility: Flow Logs or Traffic Collector?
You might have heard about VNet Flow Logs, I posted about this new Azure feature here. One of the applications of VNet Flow Logs is to gain visibility into traffic in places that had been blind spots until now, such as in the Gateway Subnets to inspect traffic on VPN or ExpressRoute. Talking about ExpressRoute, … Continue reading ExpressRoute traffic visibility: Flow Logs or Traffic Collector?
Do not let ExpressRoute, VPN and SDWAN traffic bypass your firewall
I have recently expanded my SDWAN in hub-and-spoke networks design guide to include SDWAN-to-firewall routing. Initially I didn’t have this point, but recent conversations have made me realize that not everybody understand this. The main difficulty in this topic is related to the fact that you cannot inspect the effective routes of your Virtual Network … Continue reading Do not let ExpressRoute, VPN and SDWAN traffic bypass your firewall
Designing your SDWAN and Firewall into Azure Hub and Spoke
Designing network connectivity in public cloud can very quickly become a daunting task. Of course, public cloud providers do offer native networking services, and with those it is fairly easy. This should always be your primary route (pun intended). For example, in the case of Azure, using Virtual WAN and its native integration with both … Continue reading Designing your SDWAN and Firewall into Azure Hub and Spoke
Monitoring Azure Networks with Alerts
Monitoring is one of those underrated disciplines: everybody tells you to do it, but nobody tells you exactly how. As a consequence, there are many different approaches and few concrete recommendations. Before continuing, a word of caution: I am not going to cover introductory topics in this post. If you are not familiar with Virtual … Continue reading Monitoring Azure Networks with Alerts
You want to use AS-path as your virtual hub routing preference
Wow, that was a long title. Let me give you another one: if you haven’t tested your High Availability (HA) or Disaster Recovery (DR) plans, you shouldn’t rely on them. This is of course regardless of whether your infrastructure runs on your premises, on public cloud, or anywhere else. In this post I am going … Continue reading You want to use AS-path as your virtual hub routing preference
Virtual Network Gateways routing in Azure
If you have ever used Azure, you probably have used one of these Virtual Network Gateways too: whether it is to connect your branches and headquarters with Azure via IPsec VPN or ExpressRoute, or to provide connectivity to your mobile workers or external partners through Point-to-Site VPNs. In this post I will go deep on … Continue reading Virtual Network Gateways routing in Azure
Overlapping IP addresses in a hub-and-spoke network (feat. AVNM & ARS)
I have had some questions around a common theme asked by some large Azure customers. These refrains might sound familiar to you: “I have run out of IPv4 addresses“, “My network team can only allocate so many IPs for Azure“, “How can I reuse IP space in Azure?“. If they do, I have a hack … Continue reading Overlapping IP addresses in a hub-and-spoke network (feat. AVNM & ARS)
Azure Virtual WAN Hub Routing Preference
You probably know Azure Virtual WAN: it is an Azure service that provides any-to-any connectivity across regions out of the box, or a “global transit network architecture”, as they describe here: Essentially Virtual WAN is a set of Microsoft-managed virtual hubs peered to each other, where you would connect your VNets and/or branches (ExpressRoute, Site-to-Site … Continue reading Azure Virtual WAN Hub Routing Preference
Azure VMware Solution networking voodoo
One of the most common and yet complex networking designs in Azure is interconnecting Azure IaaS workloads deployed in a Virtual Network, vSphere virtual machines in an Azure VMware Solution private cloud, and on-premises networks. My esteemed colleague Robin Heringa kindly gave me access to an AVS cluster, so armed with the fantastic possibilities that … Continue reading Azure VMware Solution networking voodoo
Cloudtrooper 