Azure Virtual Networking – An MVA Course

I taught an Azure class week to a bunch of architects who were fairly new to Azure. It seemed to me that one of the subjects they had the most trouble getting to grips with was Azure Networking. Interoperating with Azure VMs (in a service and in a vnet) and Azure Paas instances is just different from on-premises networking, what with VIPs,DIPS, the complexity of VPNs, etc. There is nothing that can't be learned, but for seasoned architects used to on-premises networking many of the fundamentals are just plain different.

I see that Microsoft's Virtual Academy has brought out a course on Azure Networking, which you can find here: http://www.microsoftvirtualacademy.com/training-courses/azure-networking-fundamentals-for-it-pros. This course covers Virtual Networking in Azure. Basic networking inside VMs is not covered however – and that would make a great MVA course.

One small comment on this course (and some of Azure documentation) – there are not enough pictures. As this course progresses, I'd have liked to have seen more pictures containing the details. Nevertheless, the material is well covered.

This  course has four units:

• Introduction to Azure Networking Basics and VPN requirements
• Plan and Design your Cloud Network Infrastructure
• Configuring Azure and On Premises
• Testing connectivity and Monitoring

Each module has a video – in the 4 modules the videos last around 55 minutes. Each module also has a slide presentation you can download and a short assessment to test your learning.

del.icio.us Tags: Azure,Azure Virtual Networks

Azure IP Ranges

If you are setting up firewall exclusions related to Azure resources, it helps to know the Azure Dataenter IP address ranges. Turns out – that's really pretty easy: just download the details from the Microsoft Download Centre. Go here, the Azure Site and download that list.  The actual deep link to the XML document containing the IP ranges is: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=390343. Speaking personally, I found that deep link a bit hard to see on the Datacenter IP Ranges page.

The list that can download from Microsoft contains the all Compute IP address ranges (including SQL ranges) used by the Azure Datacenters around teh world. Each section of the XML document specifies a geographic region and the IP address ranges associated with that region.

The download is an XML document containing the current IP address ranges for all Azure data centres around the world, except China. The document looks like this (when viewed from PowerShell ISE):

The Windows Azure Datacenter IP Ranges in China are separately defined. The download centre enables you to download a separate list as the Chinese data centres are operated by 21Vianet.  You can get this document from here: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=42064. It looks like this:

These IP address lists are published weekly. Microsoft also go on to make a good security point: Do not assume that all traffic originating from these IP address ranges is trustworthy!

del.icio.us Tags: Azure,Azure networks,Azure IP ranges