• Scenario 1: Hybrid connectivity with Azure VPN Gateway
• Scenario 2: Hybrid connectivity with Azure VPN Gateway & Traffic Inspection with Azure Firewall
• Scenario 3: Hybrid Connectivity with Azure VPN Gateway, second level peered networks & full traffic inspection with Azure Firewall

At the previews posts, we covered the basics of routing traffic from/to on-premises, inspecting all traffic through Azure Firewall, and configuring the DNS for accessing the Private Endpoints. In this scenario, I am experimenting with connectivity between on-premises, the Hub & Spoke networks and a second level peered network (a network that is peered behind the Spoke network).

Recap of Scenario 1 & 2: We have a Hub network, two Spoke networks and an IPSec VPN connection with my on-premises network. We established routing all traffic through the Azure Firewall for inspection & configured DNS for accessing the Private Endpoint from on-premises & all Azure VNets.

In the third scenario, I am adding a new Spoke VNet, the “Azure 2” peered with my hub, and a third VNet, the “Azure 3” that is only peered with the “Azure 2” VNet. To enable connectivity between the “Azure 3” VNet and the rest of the networks, including the on-premises, we need a router at the “Azure 2” VNet. This can be an NVA or Azure Firewall. In my case, I added an Azure Firewall. The Azure Firewall of “Azure 2” VNet has the private IP: 192.168.200.64.

• Azure 3 VNet, VM Subnet Route Table:
  • 10.0.0.0/16 NH 192.168.200.68
  • 192.168.0.0/20 NH 192.168.200.68
  • 192.168.4.0/24 NH 192.168.200.68
  • 192.168.5.0/24 NH 192.168.200.68
  • 192.168.200.0/28 NH 192.168.200.68

• Azure 2 VNet, AzureFirewallSubnet:
  • 10.0.0.0/0 NH Internet
  • 10.0.0.0/16 NH 192.168.2.4
  • 192.168.0.0/20 NH 192.168.2.4
  • 192.168.4.0/24 NH 192.168.2.4
  • 192.168.5.0/24 NH 192.168.2.4

• Azure 2 VNet, VM Subnet:
  • 10.0.0.0/16 NH 192.168.200.68
  • 192.168.4.0/24 NH 192.168.200.68
  • 192.168.5.0/24 NH 192.168.200.68
  • 192.168.0.0/20 NH 192.168.200.68
  • 10.100.0.0/16 NH 192.168.200.64

• Azure Hub VNet, AzureFirewallSubet:
  • 10.0.0.0/0 NH Internet
  • 192.168.200.0/28 NH 192.168.200.68
  • 10.100.0.0/16 NH 192.168.200.68
• Azure Hub VNet, VM Subnet:
  • 10.0.0.0/16 NH 192.168.2.4
  • 192.168.4.0/24 NH 192.168.2.4
  • 192.168.5.0/24 NH 192.168.2.4
  • 192.168.4.4/32 NH 192.168.2.4
  • 192.168.200.0/24 NH 192.168.2.4
  • 10.100.0.0/16 NH 192.168.2.4
• Azure Hub VNet, GatewaySubnet:
  • 192.168.0.0/24 NH 192.168.2.4
  • 192.168.4.0/24 NH 192.168.2.4
  • 192.168.5.0/24 NH 192.168.2.4
  • 192.168.4.4/32 NH 192.168.2.4
  • 192.168.200.0/24 NH 192.168.2.4
  • 10.100.0.0/16 NH 192.168.2.4
• Spoke 2 VNet, VM Subnet:
  • 10.0.0.0/16 NH 192.168.2.4
  • 192.168.4.0/24 NH 192.168.2.4
  • 192.168.0.0/24 NH 192.168.2.4
  • 192.168.200.0/24 NH 192.168.2.4

Routing Example

Let’s describe a packet’s journey. The On-premises Server X (10.0.2.10) makes sends a packet to 10.100.0.4. 1st hop the packet goes to the default gateway, reaching the on-premises VPN device, in our case the RRAS. The RRAS has a custom route for 10.100.0.0/16 and forwards the packet to the VPN interface. The packet reaches the Azure VPN Gateway The Azure VPN Gateway has a custom route for 10.100.0.0/16 and forwards the packet to the HUB Azure Firewall, 192.168.2.4. The HUB Azure Firewall has a custom route for 10.100.0.0/16 and forwards the packet to the “Azure 2” Azure Firewall, 192.168.200.68. The “Azure 2” Azure Firewall does not have a custom route, but it has a route for 10.100.0.0/16 that is automatically populated by the VNet peering. The Azure FIrewall knows to forward the packet through the VNet peering and reaches the destination.

You can find more commends and tests in the below diagram with the whole solution.

Diagram: (Click here to download a high-resolution SVG image)

References:
Azure Routing Experiences | Scenario 1 – Apostolidis Cloud Corner
Azure Routing Experiences | Scenario 2 – Apostolidis Cloud Corner
Use Azure Firewall to inspect traffic destined to a private endpoint – Azure Private Link | Microsoft Docs
Azure Private Endpoint DNS configuration | Microsoft Docs
What is a virtual network link subresource of Azure DNS private zones | Microsoft Docs
Azure Firewall DNS Proxy details | Microsoft Docs
Create, change, or delete an Azure route table | Microsoft Docs

Pantelis Apostolidis

Pantelis Apostolidis is a Sr. Specialist, Azure at Microsoft and a former Microsoft Azure MVP. For the last 20 years, Pantelis has been involved to major cloud projects in Greece and abroad, helping companies to adopt and deploy cloud technologies, driving business value. He is entitled to a lot of Microsoft Expert Certifications, demonstrating his proven experience in delivering high quality solutions. He is an author, blogger and he is acting as a spokesperson for conferences, workshops and webinars. He is also an active member of several communities as a moderator in azureheads.gr and autoexec.gr. Follow him on Twitter @papostolidis.

www.cloudcorner.gr

The post Azure Routing Experiences | Scenario 3 appeared first on Apostolidis Cloud Corner.

At this post we will see how to make a high available connection between our on-premises network and Azure. This way we will have an Active-Active Dual-Redundancy VPN Connection.

The idea behind this is that we have a router/firewall cluster,connected with two ISPs and we want to also have a VPN connection with Azure using both ISPs actively. I call this an end-to-end high available connectivity between our on-premises infrastructure and Azure. Actually the active-active dual redundant connections needs to have two different on-premises VPN devices, but we can accomplish almost the same functionality with one device and two different interfaces with two different ISPs.

The requirement for this topology, except the router/firewall cluster and the two ISPs is that the Azure VPN Gateway must be Standard or HighPerformance SKU. The Basic SKU does not support Active-Active mode.

As you can see at the above diagram, the Active-Active VPN Gateway created two Active VPN Nodes. The connection of each node to each on-premises network interface in a mesh topology. All network traffic is distributed through all the connections. In order to accomplish this connectivity we need to also enable BGP to both on-premises device and Azure VPN Gateway with different ASN.

Lets lab it:

Create a Virtual Network Gateway, VPN, Route Based and SKU VpnGw1 or larger

Enable active-active mode, this will create two nodes, and give the names of the two Public IPs.

Check the Configure BGB ASN and change the default ASN, I used 65510

wait a lot… more than the typical 45 minutes, a lot more…

When the gateway is created you will see that the public ip address is called “First public IP address”. If you click the “see more” link you will see the second IP too.

You can see both IP form the Properties page too.

Second we need to create two Local network Gateways, to represent the two interfaces of our on-premises device. Both must be created with the same ASN. This ASM must be different than the Gateways’ and this ASN must be configured at the configuration of the local devices VPN connection.

]

Now, create the connection

And remember to enable BGP at the Connection’s Configuration

As soon as the local device is configured both connections became connected.

From powershell we can see both local IPs of the two nodes of the Azure VPN Gateway,

Test and Troubleshooting

Currently the only way to see the connections between the Azure Gateway Nodes and the local devices interfaces is the below powershell command

Get-AzureRmVirtualNetworkGatewayBGpPeerStatus -VirtualNetworkGatewayName “gatewayname” -ResourceGroup “resourcegroupname”

Every time you run this command you get answer from one of the two nodes at random. At the above screenshot, first is one node and second is the other.

The first node’s peer, 192.168.xx.9 shows that is connected to the 10.xx.xx.2 local network’s peer and connecting at the second peer 10.xx.xx.1

The second node’s peer, 192.168.xx.8 shows that is connected to the 10.xx.xx.1 local network’s peer and connecting at the second peer 10.xx.xx.2

The test I performed was to unplug one interface from the local device. The azure gateway’s first node State was both Connecting and the second node was the same, connecting to .2 and connected to .1.  At this test I did lost a single ping.

After that I plugged the cable back, waited less than a minute and unplugged the second cable. Now the first node shows still disconnected but the first node connected to the .2 local IP and connecting to .1. With this test I lost only one ping. Also I realized that it is random which node’s private IP will connect with the local device’s private IP. Both Azure Gateway’s IPs 192.168.x.8 & 9 can connect with the local device’s IP 10.x.x.1 & 2 and this is the magic of the Active-Active Dual Redundancy VPN connection.

Pantelis Apostolidis

Pantelis Apostolidis is a Sr. Specialist, Azure at Microsoft and a former Microsoft Azure MVP. For the last 20 years, Pantelis has been involved to major cloud projects in Greece and abroad, helping companies to adopt and deploy cloud technologies, driving business value. He is entitled to a lot of Microsoft Expert Certifications, demonstrating his proven experience in delivering high quality solutions. He is an author, blogger and he is acting as a spokesperson for conferences, workshops and webinars. He is also an active member of several communities as a moderator in azureheads.gr and autoexec.gr. Follow him on Twitter @papostolidis.

www.cloudcorner.gr

The post Create an Ultra High Available on-prem <-> Azure VPN Connection appeared first on Apostolidis Cloud Corner.

Peering is a feature that allows to connect two or more virtual networks and act as one bigger network. At this post we will see how we can connect two Azure Virtual Networks, using peering and access the whole network using one VPN Gateway. We can connect Virtual Networks despite if they are in the same Subscription or not.

I have created a diagram to help understand the topology.

• We have a Virtual Network with Site-2-Site VPN wto On Premises. It can also have Point-2-Site connection configured. The VNET A.
• We have another Virtual Network at the Same Subscription that we want to connect each other. The VNET B.
• Also we can have a third Virtual Network at a different subscription. The VNET C.

In sort we need those peerings with the specific settings:

• At the VNETA Peering VNETA to VNETB with “Allow Gateway transit”
• At the VNETA Peering VNETA to VNET
• At the VNETB Peering VNETB to VNETA with “Use Remote Gateway”
• At the VNETB Peering VNETB to VNETC
• At the VNETC Peering VNETC to VNETA with “Use Remote Gateway”
• At the VNETC Peering VNETC to VNETB

In order to be able to connect all those networks and also access them using the VPN Connection there are four requirements:

• The account that will be used to create the peering must have the “Network Contributor” Role.
• The Address Space must be different on each other and not overlap.
• All other Virtual Networks, except the one that has the VPN Connection must NOT have a VPN Gateway deployed.
• Of course at the local VPN device (router) we need to add the address spaces of all the Virtual Networks that we need to access.

Lets lab it:

• HQ 192.168.0.0/16 –> The on-premises network
• VNET A 10.1.0.0/16 –> The Virtual Network that has the VPN Gateway (At my lab is named “devvn”)
• VNET B 10.229.128.0/24 –> THe virtual network at a different subscription of the Gateway (At my lab is named “Network prtg-rsg-vnet”)
• VNET C 172.16.1.0/24 –> The virtual network at the same subscription as the Gateway Network (At my lab is named “provsevnet)

The on-premises network is connected with Site-to-site (IPsec) VPN to the VNETA

Now we need to connect VNETA and VNETB using Vnet Peering. in order to have a Peering connection we need to create a connection from VNETA to VNETB and one from VNETB to VNETA.

Open the VNETA Virtual Network, go to the Peerings setting and press +ADD

Select the VNETB and check the “Allow Gateway transit” to allow the peer virtual network to use your virtual network gateway

Then go to the VNETB, go to the Peerings setting and click +ADD.

Select the VNETA Virtual Network and check the “Use Remote Gateway”  to use the peer’s virtual network gateway. This way the VNETB will use the VNETA’s Gateway.

Now we can contact the VNETB network from our on-premises network

a multi-ping screenshot:

• From 10.229.128.5 (VNETB) to 192.168.0.4 (on-premises) & the opposite
• From 10..1.2.4 (VNETA) to 10.229.128.5 (VNETB)  & to 192.168.0.4 (on-premises)

The next step is to create a cross-subscription peering VNETA with VNETC

Open the VNETA and create a peering by selecting the VNETC from the other Subscription and check the “allow gateway transit”

Then go to the VNETC and create a peer with the VNETA and check the “use remote gaeway”

With the two above connections we have connectivity between the on-premises network and the VNETC.

The final step, to enable the connectivity between VNETB & VNETC. To accomplish this just create one peer from the VNETB to VNETC and one from VNETC to VNETB.

Ping inception:

In order to have client VPN connectivity to the whole network, create a Point-2-Site VPN at the VNETA. You can follow this guide: Azure Start Point | Point-to-Site VPN

Pantelis Apostolidis

Pantelis Apostolidis is a Sr. Specialist, Azure at Microsoft and a former Microsoft Azure MVP. For the last 20 years, Pantelis has been involved to major cloud projects in Greece and abroad, helping companies to adopt and deploy cloud technologies, driving business value. He is entitled to a lot of Microsoft Expert Certifications, demonstrating his proven experience in delivering high quality solutions. He is an author, blogger and he is acting as a spokesperson for conferences, workshops and webinars. He is also an active member of several communities as a moderator in azureheads.gr and autoexec.gr. Follow him on Twitter @papostolidis.

www.cloudcorner.gr

The post Connect two or more Azure Virtual Networks using one VPN Gateway appeared first on Apostolidis Cloud Corner.

In this post series we will go through some basic steps on how to start with Microsoft Azure. At this post we will see how we can create Point-to-Site VPN connection with Azure.

If you don’t have an Azure Subscription, you can easily create a free trial by just going to https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/free/

Create typical a VIrtual Network

In order to create Point-to-Site VPN connection it needs a Virtual Network Gateway. Go to the Virtual Network, Subnets and add a Gateway Subnet.

FInally we can add the Virtual Network Gateway. From the portal, create a Virtual Network Gateway resource and add it to the previously created Virtual Network.

The Virtual Network Gateway can take up to 45 minutes to be created.

Once the Virtual Network Gateway is created we need one more step. To configure Point-to-site. Open the Virtual Network Gateway and press configure.

We will need a root and a client self-signed certificate to complete the setup. Using a WIndows 10 or Windows Server 2016 machine we can make use of the New-SelfSignedCertificate cmdlet that makes the process easy. The whole process is described here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/vpn-gateway/vpn-gateway-certificates-point-to-site

For the root certificate run the below PowerShell using ISE:

$cert = New-SelfSignedCertificate -Type Custom -KeySpec Signature `
-Subject "CN=prodevrootcert" -KeyExportPolicy Exportable `
-HashAlgorithm sha256 -KeyLength 2048 `
-CertStoreLocation "Cert:\CurrentUser\My" -KeyUsageProperty Sign -KeyUsage CertSign

For the client certificate run the below PowerShell using ISE:

New-SelfSignedCertificate -Type Custom -DnsName ProDevChildCert -KeySpec Signature `
-Subject "CN=ProDevChildCert" -KeyExportPolicy Exportable `
-HashAlgorithm sha256 -KeyLength 2048 `
-CertStoreLocation "Cert:\CurrentUser\My" `
-Signer $cert -TextExtension @("2.5.29.37={text}1.3.6.1.5.5.7.3.2")

Export the root certificate in cer format using MMC, open the Certificates snap-in and select “current user”. Find the root certificate under Personal –> Certificates and right click –> All Tasks export

Select to “not export the private key” and use Base64 encoded.

Now you have the prodevrootcert.cer

After that, export the client certificate by selecting “export the private key” , select the “include all certificates in the certification path” and the “enable certificate privacy”. Add a password and export it to pfx file.

Now you have the prodevchildcert.pfx. This pfx file must be installed to all the client computers that will use this Point-to-Site connection.

Now lets go back to the Point-to-Site configuration page. Add an address pool that the VPN clients will use. This subnet must be different from the Virtual Network address space.

Then open the root certificate, the cer file, using notepad, copy the text between the Begin and End marks.

Paste the certificate text to the “Root certificated” –> Public certificate data” field and add a name to the “Name” field.

Press Save and the “Download VPN Client” button will be enabled and we can download the VPN client.

In order to establish the VPN connection we need to install the VPN Client and the Client “pfx” certificate to the workstation.

Pantelis Apostolidis

Pantelis Apostolidis is a Sr. Specialist, Azure at Microsoft and a former Microsoft Azure MVP. For the last 20 years, Pantelis has been involved to major cloud projects in Greece and abroad, helping companies to adopt and deploy cloud technologies, driving business value. He is entitled to a lot of Microsoft Expert Certifications, demonstrating his proven experience in delivering high quality solutions. He is an author, blogger and he is acting as a spokesperson for conferences, workshops and webinars. He is also an active member of several communities as a moderator in azureheads.gr and autoexec.gr. Follow him on Twitter @papostolidis.

www.cloudcorner.gr

The post Azure Start Point | Point-to-Site VPN appeared first on Apostolidis Cloud Corner.