Thoughts from the clouds
I often need to learn how certain platforms work, and to achieve that there is no better way than deploying a sample workload and run some tests with it: for example for the “A day in the life of a packet on AKS” series that I wrote some years ago when AKS was something new … Continue reading Yet Another Demo App
Azure Firewall is a fantastic product: oversimplifying, an architecture that scales out great, provides traffic forwarding and security in Azure, and is very easy to integrate in a network. Some times you need to manipulate the default routing of Azure VNets, and Azure Route Server offers an invaluable tool for that. However, Azure Route Server … Continue reading Azure Firewall’s sidekick to join the BGP superheroes
You might have read my previous intro post to the AAD Application Proxy, where I went over a quick intro to this service and a comparison with other reverse proxies available in the Azure portfolio. I finished that post with a very generic diagram describing how to combine multiple proxies to get different capabilities, for … Continue reading AAD Application Proxy: Where is my WAF?
You might have come across a post from my good friend Adam on SDWAN Design options in Azure, where he details seven design alternatives when incorporating SDWAN to an Azure network. While I was reading Adam’s great summary, I was wondering whether I could summarize his design options and recommendations using the 3-tier cloud netowrk … Continue reading Where do I put my SDWAN?
Azure Route Server is a very powerful tool that thas been recently brought to the Azure Networking toolset: it offers a BGP API so that virtual machines can communicate with a VNet to learn and advertise routes. I have written some articles about Route Server in the past on how to achieve certain scenarios, but … Continue reading Azure Route Server: to encap or not to encap, that is the question
After some questions in my previous blog post CLI-based analysis of an ExpressRoute private peering I decided to write an addition that includes what Expressroute Global Reach looks like for the CLI lover. In essence, Global Reach allows to use Microsoft’s backbone network for onprem-to-onprem communication. But how does it do it exactly? I have … Continue reading ExpressRoute Global Reach under the covers
Azure can be used to offer Point-To-Site (P2S) connectivity for individual users, that by leveraging a VPN client on their systems (Windows, Linux or Mac) can get connectivity to Azure resources. This P2S connectivity is often limited to Azure resources, but by leveraging the Azure Route Server, additional access is offered. For example, if an … Continue reading Sending Internet Traffic from P2S Clients Through an NVA
An old Cherokee proverb says: “Listen to the whispers and you won’t have to hear the screams”. Routing problems are hard: Hard to uncover, because sometimes they will not become apparent until something happens. For example, when your backup routes disappear, and you only notice when the primary routes are gone too. And hard in … Continue reading Listen to the Whispers of BGP
In a previous blog we had a setup with a Network Virtual Appliance (NVA) for Internet egress and hybrid connectivity based on Azure Virtual Network Gateways. There is another fairly typical use case with regards to traffic between on-premises an Azure: firewalling it with an NVA: In some situations customers will combine the role of … Continue reading Using Route Server to firewall onprem traffic with an NVA
Amongst the many Ignite announcements this year, my favourite is the new Azure Route Server, in public preview now, since it has the potential to dramatically change how networks are built in Azure. If you are thinking “here he comes with his BGP thing again”… You are right! Let me explain: In public cloud there … Continue reading Azure Route Server: super powers for your Network Virtual Appliance
Cloudtrooper 