Azure ExpressRoute
In today's ever-evolving digital landscape, businesses are increasingly relying on cloud services for their infrastructure and data needs. Azure ExpressRoute, a dedicated network connection provided by Microsoft, offers a reliable and secure solution for organizations seeking direct access to Azure services. In this blog post, we will dive into the world of Azure ExpressRoute, exploring its benefits, implementation, and use cases.
Azure ExpressRoute is a private connection that allows businesses to establish a dedicated link between their on-premises network and Microsoft Azure. Unlike a regular internet connection, ExpressRoute offers higher security, lower latency, and increased reliability. By bypassing the public internet, organizations can experience enhanced performance and better control over their data.
Enhanced Performance: With ExpressRoute, businesses can achieve lower latency and higher bandwidth, resulting in faster and more responsive access to Azure services. This is especially critical for applications that require real-time data processing or heavy workloads.
Improved Security: ExpressRoute ensures a private and secure connection to Azure, reducing the risk of data breaches and unauthorized access. By leveraging private connections, businesses can maintain a higher level of control over their data and maintain compliance with industry regulations.
Hybrid Cloud Integration: Azure ExpressRoute enables seamless integration between on-premises infrastructure and Azure services. This allows organizations to extend their existing network resources to the cloud, creating a hybrid environment that offers flexibility and scalability.
Provider Selection: Businesses can choose from a range of ExpressRoute providers, including major telecommunications companies and internet service providers. It is essential to evaluate factors such as coverage, pricing, and support when selecting a provider that aligns with specific requirements.
Connection Types: Azure ExpressRoute offers two connection types - Layer 2 (Ethernet) and Layer 3 (IPVPN). Layer 2 provides a flexible and scalable solution, while Layer 3 offers more control over routing and traffic management. Understanding the differences between these connection types is crucial for successful implementation.
Global Enterprises: Large organizations with geographically dispersed offices can leverage Azure ExpressRoute to establish a private, high-speed connection to Azure services. This ensures consistent performance and secure data transmission across multiple locations.
Data-Intensive Applications: Industries dealing with massive data volumes, such as finance, healthcare, and research, can benefit from ExpressRoute's dedicated bandwidth. By bypassing the public internet, these organizations can achieve faster data transfers and real-time analytics.
Compliance and Security Requirements: Businesses operating in highly regulated industries, such as banking or government sectors, can utilize Azure ExpressRoute to meet stringent compliance requirements. The private connection ensures data privacy, integrity, and adherence to industry-specific regulations.
Azure ExpressRoute opens up a world of possibilities for businesses seeking a secure, high-performance connection to the cloud. By leveraging dedicated network links, organizations can unlock the full potential of Azure services while maintaining control over their data and ensuring compliance. Whether it's enhancing performance, improving security, or enabling hybrid cloud integration, ExpressRoute proves to be a valuable asset in today's digital landscape.
Highlights: Azure ExpressRoute
What is Azure ExpressRoute?
Azure ExpressRoute provides a private and dedicated connection between on-premises infrastructure and the Azure cloud. Unlike a regular internet connection, ExpressRoute offers a more reliable and consistent performance by bypassing public networks. It allows businesses to extend their network into the Azure cloud and access various services with enhanced speed and reduced latency.
a) Enhanced Network Performance: By bypassing the public internet, ExpressRoute offers low-latency connections, ensuring faster data transfers and improved application performance. This is particularly beneficial for bandwidth-intensive workloads and real-time applications.
b) Improved Security: With ExpressRoute, data exchanges between on-premises infrastructure and Azure occur over a private connection, reducing the exposure to potential security threats. This added layer of security is crucial for organizations dealing with sensitive and confidential data.
c) Scalability and Flexibility: ExpressRoute enables businesses to scale their network connectivity as their needs grow. Whether it’s expanding to new regions or increasing bandwidth capacity, ExpressRoute provides the necessary flexibility to accommodate changing requirements.
**Setting up Azure ExpressRoute**
a) Connectivity Models: Azure ExpressRoute supports two connectivity models – Network Service Provider (NSP) and Exchange Provider (IXP). NSP connectivity involves partnering with a network service provider to establish the connection, while IXP connectivity allows direct peering with Azure at an internet exchange point.
b) Prerequisites and Configuration: Before setting up ExpressRoute, organizations need to meet certain prerequisites, such as having an Azure subscription and establishing peering relationships. Configuration involves defining routing settings, setting up virtual networks, and configuring the ExpressRoute circuit.
**Use Cases for Azure ExpressRoute**
a) Hybrid Cloud Environments: ExpressRoute is ideal for organizations that operate in a hybrid cloud environment, integrating on-premises infrastructure with Azure. It enables seamless data transfers and allows businesses to leverage the benefits of both private and public cloud environments.
b) Big Data and Analytics: For data-intensive workloads, such as big data analytics, ExpressRoute provides a high-bandwidth and low-latency connection to Azure, ensuring efficient data processing and analysis.
c) Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity: ExpressRoute plays a crucial role in disaster recovery scenarios by providing a reliable and dedicated connection to Azure. Organizations can replicate their critical data and applications to Azure, ensuring business continuity in case of unforeseen events.
Common Azure Cloud Components
- Azure Networking
Using Azure Networking, you can connect your on-premises data center to the cloud using fully managed and scalable networking services. Azure networking services allow you to build a secure virtual network infrastructure, manage your applications’ network traffic, and protect them from DDoS attacks. In addition to enabling secure remote access to internal resources within your organization, Azure network resources can also be used to monitor and secure your network connectivity globally.
With Azure, complex network architectures can be supported with robust, fully managed, and dynamic network infrastructure. A hybrid network solution combines on-premises and cloud infrastructure to create public access to network services and secure application networks.
- Azure Virtual Network
Azure Virtual Network, the foundation of Azure networking, provides a secure and isolated environment for your resources. It lets you define your IP address space, create subnets, and establish connectivity to your on-premises network. With Azure Virtual Network, you have complete control over network traffic flow, security policies, and routing.
- Azure Load Balancer
In a world where high availability and scalability are paramount, Azure Load Balancer comes to the rescue. This powerful tool distributes incoming network traffic across multiple VM instances, ensuring optimal resource utilization and fault tolerance. Whether it’s TCP or UDP traffic or public or private load balancing, Azure Load Balancer has you covered.
- Azure Virtual WAN
Azure Virtual WAN simplifies network connectivity and management for organizations with geographically dispersed branches. By leveraging Microsoft’s global network infrastructure, Virtual WAN provides secure and optimized connectivity between branches and Azure resources. It seamlessly integrates with Azure Virtual Network and offers features like VPN and ExpressRoute connectivity.
- Azure Firewall
Network security is a top priority, and Azure Firewall rises to the challenge. Acting as a highly available, cloud-native firewall-as-a-service, Azure Firewall provides centralized network security management. It offers application and network-layer filtering, threat intelligence integration, and outbound connectivity control. With Azure Firewall, you can safeguard your network and applications with ease.
- Azure Virtual Network
Azure Virtual Networks (Azure VNets) are essential in building networks within the Azure infrastructure. Azure networking is fundamental to managing and securely connecting to other external networks (public and on-premises) over the Internet.
Azure VNet goes beyond traditional on-premises networks. In addition to isolation, high availability, and scalability, It helps secure your Azure resources by allowing you to administer, filter, or route traffic based on your preferences.
- Peering between Azure VNets
Peering between Azure Virtual Networks (VNets) allows you to connect several virtual networks. Microsoft’s infrastructure and a secure private network connect the VMs in the peer virtual networks. Resources can be shared and connected directly between the two networks in a peering network.
Azure currently supports global VNet peering, which connects virtual networks within the same Azure region, instead of global VNet peering, which connects virtual networks across Azure regions.
A virtual wide area network powered by Azure
Azure Virtual WAN is a managed networking service that offers networking, security, and routing features. It is made possible by the Azure global network. Various VPN connectivity options are available, including site-to-site VPNs and ExpressRoutes.
For those who prefer working from home or other remote locations, virtual WANs assist in connecting to the Internet and other Azure resources, including networking and remote user connectivity. Using Azure Virtual WAN, existing infrastructure or data centers can be moved from on-premises to Microsoft Azure.
Internet Challenges
One of the primary culprits behind sluggish internet performance is the occurrence of bottlenecks. These bottlenecks can happen at various points along the internet infrastructure, from local networks to internet service providers (ISPs) and even at the server end. Limited bandwidth can also impact internet speed, especially during peak usage hours when networks become congested. Understanding these bottlenecks and bandwidth limitations is crucial in addressing internet performance issues.
The Role of Latency
While speed is essential, it’s not the only factor contributing to a smooth online experience. Latency, often measured in milliseconds, is critical in determining how quickly data travels between its source and destination. High latency can result in noticeable delays, particularly in activities that require real-time interaction, such as online gaming or video conferencing. Various factors, including distance, network congestion, and routing inefficiencies, can contribute to latency issues.
ExpressRoute Azure
Using Azure ExpressRoute, you can extend on-premises networks into Microsoft’s cloud infrastructure over a private connection. This networking service allows you to connect your on-premises networks to Azure. You can connect your on-premises network with Azure using an IP VPN network with Layer 3 connectivity, enabling you to connect Azure to your own WAN or data center on-premises.
There is no internet traffic with Azure ExpressRoute since the connection is private. Compared to public networks, ExpressRoute connections are faster, more reliable, more available, and more secure.
a) Enhanced Security: ExpressRoute provides a private connection, making it an ideal choice for organizations dealing with sensitive data. By avoiding the public internet, companies can significantly reduce the risk of unauthorized access and potential security breaches.
b) High Performance: ExpressRoute allows businesses to achieve faster data transfers and lower latency than standard internet connections. This is particularly beneficial for applications that require real-time data processing, such as video streaming, IoT solutions, and financial transactions.
c) Reliable and Consistent Connectivity: Azure ExpressRoute offers uptime Service Level Agreements (SLAs) and guarantees a more stable connection than internet-based connections. This ensures critical workloads and applications remain accessible and functional even during peak usage.
**Use Cases for Azure ExpressRoute**
a) Hybrid Cloud Environments: ExpressRoute enables organizations to extend their on-premises infrastructure to the Azure cloud seamlessly. This facilitates a hybrid cloud setup, where companies can leverage Azure’s scalability and flexibility while retaining certain workloads or sensitive data within their own data centers.
b) Big Data and Analytics: ExpressRoute provides a reliable and high-bandwidth connection to Azure’s data services for businesses that heavily rely on big data analytics. This enables faster and more efficient data transfers, allowing organizations to extract real-time actionable insights.
c) Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity: ExpressRoute can be instrumental in establishing a robust disaster recovery strategy. By replicating critical data and applications to Azure, businesses can ensure seamless failover during unforeseen events, minimizing downtime and maintaining business continuity.
You may find the following helpful post for pre-information:
Azure ExpressRoute
Let it to its defaults. When you deploy one Azure VPN gateway, two gateway instances are configured in an active standby configuration. This standby instance delivers partial redundancy but is not highly available, as it might take a few minutes for the second instance to arrive online and reconnect to the VPN destination.
For this lower level of redundancy, you can choose whether the VPN is regionally redundant or zone-redundant. If you utilize a Basic public IP address, the VPN you configure can only be regionally redundant. If you require a zone-redundant configuration, use a Standard public IP address with the VPN gateway.
The following table lists ExpressRoute locations;
Azure Express Route and Encryption
Azure ExpressRoute does not offer built-in encryption. For this reason, you should investigate Barracuda’s cloud security product sets. They offer secure transmission and automatic path failover via redundant, secure tunnels to complete an end-to-end cloud solution. Other 3rd-party security products are available in Azure but are not as mature as Barracuda’s product set.
Internet Performance
Connecting to Azure public cloud over the Internet may be cheap, but it has its drawbacks with security, uptime, latency, packet loss, and jitter. The latency, jitter, and packet loss associated with the Internet often cause the performance of an application to degrade. This is primarily a concern if you support hybrid applications requiring real-time backend on-premise communications.
Transport network performance directly impacts application performance. Businesses are now facing new challenges when accessing applications in the cloud over the Internet. Delayed round-trip time (RTT) is a big concern. TCP spends a few RTTs to establish the TCP session—two RTTs before you get the first data byte.
Client-side cookies may also add delays if they are large enough and unable to fit in the first data byte. Having a transport network offering good RTT is essential for application performance. You need the ability to transport packets as quickly as possible and support the concept that “every packet counts.“
- The Internet does not provide this or offer any guaranteed Service Level Agreement (SLA) for individual traffic classes.
The Azure solution – Azure ExpressRoute & Telecity cloud-IX
With Microsoft Azure ExpressRoute, you get your private connection to Azure with a guaranteed SLA. It’s like a natural extension to your data center, offering lower latency, higher throughput, and better reliability than the Internet. You can now build applications spanning on-premise infrastructures and Azure Cloud without compromising performance. It bypasses the Internet and lets you connect your on-premise data center to your cloud data center via 3rd-party MPLS networks.
There are two ways to establish your private connection to Azure with ExpressRoute: Exchange Provider or Network Service Provider. Choose a method if you want to co-locate equipment. Companies like Telecity offer a “bridging product” enabling direct connectivity from your WAN to Azure via their MPLS network. Even though Telecity is an exchange provider, its network offerings are network service providers. Their bridging product is called Cloud-IX. Bridging product connectivity makes Azure Cloud look like another terrestrial data center.
Cloud-IX is a neutral cloud ecosystem. It allows enterprises to establish private connections to cloud service providers, not just Azure. Telecity Cloud-IX network already has redundant NNI peering to Microsoft data centers, enabling you to set up your peering connections to Cloud-IX via BGP or statics only. You don’t peer directly with Azure. Telecity and Cloud-IX take care of transport security and redundancy. Cloud-IX is likely an MPLS network that uses route targets (RT) and route distinguishers (RD) to separate and distinguish customer traffic.
Azure ExpressRoute Redundancy
The introduction of VNets
Layer-3 overlays called VNets ( cloud boundaries/subnets) are now associated with four ExpressRoutes. This offers a proper active-active data center design, enabling path diversity and the ability to build resilient connectivity. This is great for designers as it means we can make true geo-resilience into ExpressRoute designs by creating two ExpressRoute “dedicated circuits” and associating each virtual network with both.
This ensures full end-to-end resilience built into the Azure ExpressRoute configuration, including removing all geographic SPOFs. ExpressRoute connections are created between the Exchange Service Provider or Network Service Provider and the Microsoft cloud. The connectivity between customers’ on-premise locations and the service provider is produced independently of ExpressRoute. Microsoft only peers with service providers.
Barracuda NG firewall & Azure Express Route
Barracuda NG Firewall adds protection to Microsoft ExpressRoute. The NG is installed at both ends of the connection and offers traffic access controls, security features, low latency, and automatic path failover with Barracuda’s proprietary transport protocol, TINA. Traffic Access Control: From the IP to the Application layer, the NG firewall gives you complete visibility into traffic flows in and out of ExpressRoute.
With visibility, you get better control of the traffic. In addition, the NG firewall allows you to log what servers are doing outbound. This may be interesting to know if a server gets hacked in Azure. You would like to know what the attacker is doing outbound to it. Analytics will let you contain it or log it. When you get attacked, you need to know what traffic the attacker generates and if they are pivoting to other servers.
There have been security concerns about the number of administrative domains ExpressRoute overlays. It would help if you implemented security measures as you shared the logic with other customers’ physical routers. The NG encrypts end-to-end traffic from both endpoints. This encryption can be customized based on your requirements; for example, transport may be TCP, UDP, or hybrid, and you have complete control over the keys and algorithms.
Preserve low latency
Preserve Low Latency for applications that require high-quality service. The NG can provide quality service based on ports and applications, which offer a better service to high business applications. It also optimizes traffic by sending bulk traffic automatically over the Internet and keeping critical traffic on the low latency path.
Automatic Transport Link failover with TINA. Upon MPLS link failure, the NG can automatically switch to an internet-based transport and continue to pass traffic to the Azure gateway. It automatically creates a secure tunnel over the Internet without any packet drops, offering a graceful failover to Internet VPN. This allows multiple links to be active-active, making the WAN edge similar to the analogy of SD-WAN utilizing a transport-agnostic failover approach.
TINA is SSL-based, not IPSEC, and runs over TCP/UDP /ESP. Because Azure only supports TCP & UDP, TINA is supported and can run across the Microsoft fabric.
Closing Points on Azure ExpressRoute
Azure ExpressRoute is a service that enables you to create private connections between Microsoft Azure data centers and infrastructure on your premises or in a co-location environment. Unlike a typical internet connection, ExpressRoute provides a more reliable, faster, and secure network experience. This is achieved through dedicated connectivity, which can bypass the public internet, thereby reducing latency and improving overall performance.
Azure ExpressRoute offers numerous advantages for businesses looking to optimize their cloud strategy:
1. **Enhanced Security**: By establishing a private connection, ExpressRoute minimizes the risk of data breaches that can occur over the public internet. This is particularly beneficial for industries with stringent regulatory requirements.
2. **Improved Performance**: With dedicated bandwidth, businesses can experience consistent network performance, making it ideal for data-heavy applications like analytics and real-time operations.
3. **Cost-Effective**: Although there are associated costs with implementing ExpressRoute, the potential savings in terms of downtime reduction and operational efficiency can outweigh these expenses.
4. **Scalability**: As your business grows, ExpressRoute can easily scale to accommodate increased data transfer demands without impacting performance.
Azure ExpressRoute can be particularly beneficial in several scenarios:
– **Financial Services**: Institutions that require secure and compliant connections for sensitive transactions can benefit from the enhanced security of ExpressRoute.
– **Healthcare**: Medical facilities that need to transfer large amounts of data, such as medical imaging, can do so efficiently with ExpressRoute’s high-performance connectivity.
– **Manufacturing**: Companies that rely on real-time data from IoT devices can ensure minimal latency and high reliability with ExpressRoute connections.
Implementing Azure ExpressRoute involves several steps, starting with the selection of a connectivity provider from Microsoft’s list of ExpressRoute partners. Once connected, businesses can configure their network to integrate with their existing infrastructure. Microsoft provides extensive documentation and support to aid in the setup process, ensuring a smooth transition to this powerful service.
Summary: Azure ExpressRoute
In today’s rapidly evolving digital landscape, businesses seek ways to enhance cloud connectivity for seamless data transfer and improved security. One such solution is Azure ExpressRoute, a private and dedicated network connection to Microsoft Azure. In this blog post, we delved into the various benefits of Azure ExpressRoute and how it can revolutionize your cloud experience.
Understanding Azure ExpressRoute
Azure ExpressRoute is a service that allows organizations to establish a private and dedicated connection to Azure, bypassing the public internet. This direct pathway ensures a more reliable, secure, and low-latency data and application transfer connection.
Enhanced Security and Data Privacy
With Azure ExpressRoute, organizations can significantly enhance security by keeping their data off the public internet. Establishing a private connection safeguards sensitive information from potential threats, ensuring data privacy and compliance with industry regulations.
Improved Performance and Reliability
The dedicated nature of Azure ExpressRoute ensures a high-performance connection with consistent network latency and minimal packet loss. By bypassing the public internet, organizations can achieve faster data transfer speeds, reduced latency, and enhanced user experience.
Hybrid Cloud Enablement
Azure ExpressRoute enables seamless integration between on-premises infrastructure and the Azure cloud environment. This makes it an ideal solution for organizations adopting a hybrid cloud strategy, allowing them to leverage the benefits of both environments without compromising on security or performance.
Flexible Network Architecture
Azure ExpressRoute offers flexibility in network architecture, allowing organizations to choose from multiple connectivity options. Whether establishing a direct connection from their data center or utilizing a colocation facility, organizations can design a network setup that best suits their requirements.
Conclusion:
Azure ExpressRoute provides businesses with a direct and dedicated pathway to the cloud, offering enhanced security, improved performance, and flexibility in network architecture. By leveraging Azure ExpressRoute, organizations can unlock the full potential of their cloud infrastructure and accelerate their digital transformation journey.
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Hi Matt,
You mention performance, in particular the round trip. Does high latency over an expressroute connection effect the TCP windowing the same as a standard internet session, i.e where your nice 10 gig pipes may saturate far sooner due to enlarged buffering?
Assuming it does, I see your other post about app delivery controllers, do ADC’s have any capability to stabilise a high latency link, or would your advice be to just ensure a low latency network provider connection in the first place?
Cheers,
Jeremy
Hi Jeremy, great question 🙂
High latency with small TCP window size can cause a drop in throughput. This is the case on any public or private IP network. But for example, with a private network over Cloud-IX, the service provider can implement measures to decrease the impact of this and can have some kind of re-routing over congested links. This is service provider independent and you have no control. But as you know over the public internet by default you have little control unless you deploy some kind of proactive path monitoring. A French company called Border6 comes to mind 😉 https://network-insight.net/2015/05/bgp-software-defined-networking/
DNS load balancers can be used to extract network telemetry information and provide path information that way too. NSONE ( new york ) have a nice data-driven DNS product. Have a look at this too
https://network-insight.net/2015/04/data-driven-domain-name-system-dns/
The entire idea of the Cloud-IX product is you can send delay sensitive information over it while using the internet for Video and less critical applications. Cloud-IX should never really get congested and if it does its better to upgrade your links and bandwidth capabilities they offer. Qos is not a magic bullet!
[…] started to appear in 2015. During this year, I was consulting an Azure migration and attempting to create my own DIY SD-WAN [Disclaimer: the author works for Network Insight] with a protocol called Tina from Barracuda. […]
[…] started to appear in 2015. During this year, I was consulting an Azure migration and attempting to create my own DIY SD-WAN [Disclaimer: the author works for Network Insight] with a protocol called Tina from Barracuda. […]
[…] started to appear in 2015. During this year, I was consulting an Azure migration and attempting to create my own DIY SD-WAN [Disclaimer: the author works for Network Insight] with a protocol called Tina from Barracuda. […]