Introduction
Typically, connecting to Microsoft Azure via ExpressRoute requires leasing lines from your premises to a cloud on-ramp-enabled data center and managing the routing yourself. This means long-term contracts. With Pureport, you can quickly and easily connect from customer premises to the Pureport platform using an IPSEC VPN tunnel, using your existing network hardware, and get the benefits of ExpressRoute from the Pureport platform into Azure.
Geographical Considerations
In North America, Azure allows you to privately access their publicly available services via any ExpressRoute location within North America. For example, you can access a VPC located in the West US (Oregon) region from an ExpressRoute connection located in the East US (N. Virginia) region. Traffic traverses the Microsoft's private network between the ExpressRoute location and the service endpoint location.
Prerequisites
Before you begin, you will need:
- An Azure account with permissions to create ExpressRoute Circuits
- A customer premises device capable of IPSec VPN termination
- A basic understanding of how the Pureport platform connects clouds and sites
Putting it together
The steps required to complete connectivity between an Azure vNet and Google public services are outlined below:
- Create a Pureport Network (see the "Creating a Network" article).
- Provision a VPN Gateway in your Pureport Network and connect to it from your customer premises device.
- Connect your Pureport Network to Azure via ExpressRoute.
You now have a private connection from your on-premises location to your Azure vNet(s), allowing you to create a hybrid cloud between your on-prem workloads and those in Azure.