In the rush to cloud, companies tend to focus on storage and compute infrastructure. Networking is an equally important part of your cloud architecture, and Azure provides many networking facilities to ensure that your network in the cloud allows your instances to communicate while keeping them protected. Here’s a look at the networking features available in Azure cloud:

• Azure Virtual Network. Create virtual networks in Azure and keep them isolated from other virtual networks. You can assign your virtual network private IP addresses, implement subnets. Use your own DNS server or Azure DNS for name resolution. Assign public IP addresses to make resources accessible from the internet. Virtual networks can host resources including virtual machines, and they can also be extended to include Azure resources such as storage and databases.
• Virtual private networks. Use a VPN to enable communication between an Azure virtual network and your on-premises network. The Azure VPN Gateway supports encrypted connections in various point-to-site, site-to-site, and virtual network to virtual network configurations. Azure ExpressRoute is another private connection solution that doesn’t use the public internet.
• Network security. Use network security groups to filter traffic to your resources and apply rules to both inbound and outbound traffic. Network virtual appliances let you add add a virtual machine that performs the functions of a firewall. The virtual appliances can also perform other network functions like WAN optimization.
• Load balancing. Use load balancing to manage performance and provide high availability. Azure Load Balancer can manage external traffic from the internet as well as internal traffic between Azure VMs. Azure Application Gateway builds on Azure Load Balancer to provide additional support for HTTP load balancing as well as providing a web application firewall. The Azure Traffic Manager offers another approach to load balancing, directing user traffic for optimal performance.
• Network monitoring. Keep an eye on what’s happening in your network with Azure Network Watcher. You can capture packet-level detail and review logs to understand traffic patterns and debug connectivity issues.

Have you given your Azure network design as much thought as your Azure compute and storage requirements? Prescient Solutions is a Microsoft Partner with expertise in Azure and in networking. We’ve delivered IT consulting and managed services to Chicago and Schaumburg-area businesses for 20 years. Contact us to start leveraging Azure’s networking tools to enhance your Azure cloud’s connectivity, security, and performance.