Azure VPN is a service offered by Microsoft Azure that allows users to securely connect their local networks or individual devices to a virtual network in the Azure cloud. By establishing a secure Internet connection, Azure VPN allows users to access their Azure virtual network resources as if they were on their local network. It is a powerful and affordable solution for securely connecting local networks and individual devices to a virtual network in the Azure cloud and offers numerous advantages, including secure connectivity, remote access, scalability and cost-effectiveness. In this article we are going to go a little deeper into what it is, the essential characteristics of the service, what it offers and we will take a look at the factors that influence its cost.
Let's imagine a hypothetical scenario: our organization has migrated a large part of its infrastructure to Microsoft Azure. Your primary datacenter is connected to Azure, however, you want to connect small regional facilities to the Microsoft cloud.
Secure connectivity would be needed for sensitive information to be protected as it crosses the network. We currently don't have the bandwidth requirements for a dedicated circuit, and we're looking for a way to integrate these networks cost-effectively. The VPN gateway options in Azure can help your business meet these connectivity requirements.
Microsoft Azure VPN Gateway (or simply Azure VPN) is a managed service offered by Microsoft that allows you to expose your private network through a public IP address by creating and keeping online the VPN tunnel (an encrypted channel), replacing the physical device.
Azure VPN is offered as an easier way to deploy a VPN for use with Azure virtual networks, avoiding the need to manually manage the acquisition, installation, configuration, and operation of the VPN server software.
But how does it work exactly? What is a VPN? And how can these functionalities be implemented? Let's see it in the next sections.
Even though there's a lot of talk about it, many people still have no idea what a VPN actually 'is'. So let's take a moment to review the basics and approach the next sections with a little more knowledge of the facts.
A VPN (Virtual Private Network) is a technology that allows you to create a secure, encrypted connection between a device and a network via the Internet. This connection allows you to transmit data in a safe and secure way, as if the device were physically connected to a private local network, even if the connection is made through a public network such as the Internet.
VPNs use an encrypted tunnel inside another network. They are generally distributed to connect two or more trusted private networks to each other on an untrusted network (typically public Internet). Traffic is encrypted while in transit on the untrusted network to prevent eavesdropping or other attacks.
VPNs are often used to protect online privacy, ensure data security, and allow secure remote access to corporate or private network resources. They use encryption protocols to ensure that the transmitted data cannot be intercepted by malicious actors or spies.
In summary, VPNs:
They are commonly used to ensure security in remote connections, for anonymous browsing, and to circumvent censorship or restrictions on online content.
Having clarified this, let's see what a VPN gateway is.
A VPN gateway acts like a perimeter device that allows encrypted communication on the Internet, acting as an intermediary that allows the secure transmission of data between a user's device and a private network, or between two private networks. VPN gateways are essential for establishing a secure connection, encrypting the data sent between the user and the network, thus protecting sensitive information from potential attacks.
These gateways are often used in remote access scenarios, to connect remote users to a corporate network, as well as in site-to-site configurations, to securely connect multiple business networks. VPN gateways are critical components in current network security architectures, as they provide a secure tunnel for transferring data, preserving the confidentiality and integrity of the information sent.
A VPN gateway establishes a secure, encrypted connection between networks, such as between a user device and an Azure virtual network. The process begins with the authentication and authorization of the connected devices, followed by the creation of a secure tunnel using protocols such as IPsec or SSL/TLS. As data travels through this tunnel, it is encrypted to ensure confidentiality and integrity.
The encrypted data is then transferred securely over the Internet and decoded at its destination through the VPN gateway, allowing two-way communication between the connected networks. This process allows private and secure connectivity on the public Internet, making VPN gateways crucial for scenarios such as remote user access, site-to-site connections, and secure communication in cloud environments such as Azure.
The VPN gateway stands out as the preferred choice for improving remote access security in small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs). SMEs face challenges stemming from their limited IT resources, including a shortage of qualified network and security professionals, as well as budget constraints that hinder the implementation and management of sophisticated security solutions.
However, adopting a cloud VPN gateway offers a simple, affordable, and highly scalable solution for protecting remote access to both local resources and Software as a Service (SaaS) services. This positions it as an optimal solution, adapted to the specific needs of SMEs.
We have created the Infrastructure & Security team, focused on the Azure cloud, to better respond to the needs of our customers who involve us in technical and strategic decisions. In addition to configuring and managing the tenant, we also take care of:
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Azure VPN Gateway is a key component of the services of Microsoft Azure, which provides secure and scalable connectivity between local networks, remote users and Azure resources. It facilitates the establishment of Virtual Private Network (VPN) connections, allowing organizations to securely extend their local networks to the Azure cloud.
At its core, Azure VPN Gateway acts as a bridge between local data centers or user devices and Azure Virtual Networks. It uses industry standard protocols, such as Internet Protocol Security (IPSec) and Secure Socket Tunneling Protocol (SSTP), to establish encrypted connections, ensuring the confidentiality and integrity of data transmitted over the network.
Let's see in the following list what are some of the key features of the service (the first two will be discussed later in the next subsections):
In the previous section, we mentioned support for different types of connectivity as one of the key elements of Azure VPN. In this section, we are going to explore them a little more in detail to better understand what they do. The two main types of connectivity supported by Azure VPN are respectively:
Azure Site-to-Site VPN is an encrypted connection between an Azure VPN Gateway and a remote VPN device that supports IP security (IPsec) as a tunneling protocol.
An Azure VPN Gateway is a Microsoft Azure offering as a platform-as-a-service (PaaS) that provides reliable, redundant, and high-performance connectivity between an Azure virtual network and remote sites.
A Site-to-Site VPN connection means that there are at least two sites, each with a group of computers, and these computers want to share resources with each other without using the Internet. These two sites can be local (on-premises) or one can be in the cloud and the other local, or both can be in the cloud.
Site-to-Site VPN is used when you want to connect two networks and keep communication active continuously. It is also bidirectional, but it concerns multiple devices that remain connected regardless of whether the server or workstation is active or not, since the connection is established through a network gateway and not through the computer's operating system.
The Point-to-Site (P2S) VPN in Azure is a solution designed to meet the need for secure connections from individual devices to Azure resources. This technology provides a virtual private network connection from a user's device to an Azure virtual network, allowing secure access to applications and services hosted in the cloud.
A Point-to-Site (P2S) VPN allows a user to securely connect to an Azure virtual network (the 'site') from their computer (the 'point'). In other words, a P2S VPN allows users to securely access Azure resources from anywhere in the world.
The strength of a P2S VPN lies in its flexibility and security. Because it establishes a secure connection between an individual client and Azure, developers and IT professionals can work easily and access their resources on Azure wherever they are. This makes it especially useful for remote teams, freelancers, or simply when you need to work away from the office.
In addition, the encrypted nature of a VPN contributes to data security, a critical aspect at a time when data breaches and cyberattacks are commonplace.
Azure VPN Client is an application developed by Microsoft to allow users to securely connect to virtual networks (Virtual Networks, VNet) within Azure through a VPN connection.
It is mainly used to establish a Point-to-Site connection, allowing individual devices to access resources within a VNet on Azure as if they were physically present in the corporate network. Among the main features of VPN Client we can mention:
As usual, the time has come to talk about the age-old issue of price. In this section, we will focus less on the actual figures and will instead focus on better defining which are the components that influence the cost of using the service.
For more information on the figures and to begin to estimate the costs, as always, please consult the official page of the service on the Microsoft website (available hither) where with the convenient calculation tool you can make a first estimate of the price by filtering based on region, currency used for payment and time of use of the service (calculated in hours or months).
It should also be noted that Microsoft offers its customers a thirty-day free trial with a billing credit corresponding to the value of 200 USD to start testing the functionality of the service by hand. In summary, the costs you should expect to pay include:
With all these necessary premises, let's finally see the three main components that define the price of Azure VPN and let's review them one at a time.
Microsoft charges a fee for each VPN gateway that you configure in an Azure virtual network. A fixed hourly rate applies for the time a VPN gateway is configured and available. The amount of this fee depends on two factors:
In addition to the type of VPN gateway, Microsoft also charges a fee for the number of P2S tunnels established to a VPN gateway based on time and usage. In general, all types of VPN gateways support 128 P2S tunnels at no additional cost, but each tunnel greater than 128 involves an hourly rate. The amount of this fee depends on the region where the gateway is located.
Microsoft charges data transfer fees for data leaving an Azure virtual network to the Internet through a P2S VPN connection, based on the bandwidth used (per GB). The data transfer cost per GB depends on two factors:
Data transfer rates can result in significant bandwidth costs if you are running your VPN clients in full tunnel mode, which sends all network traffic destined for the public Internet through an Azure VPN gateway and its virtual network.
As we had the opportunity to recall at the beginning of the article, the use of VPNs in the private and business context has now exploded significantly and their implementation has become much more than a habit or a sophisticated addition to their cybersecurity and data protection strategies, but a real need to keep the information and users of their organization from the cyber threats of the contemporary digital landscape.
In this context, Azure VPN presents itself as a powerful and economic solution to securely and with absolute privacy connect local networks and individual devices to a virtual network in the Azure cloud, offering numerous advantages, including secure connectivity, remote access, scalability and economic convenience.
If you are still not sure if Azure VPN is the right solution for your needs, we strongly invite you to touch its potential, take advantage of the thirty-day free trial provided by Microsoft and let the service and its wide variety of functions do the talking.
Azure VPN is a Microsoft Azure service that allows you to establish secure connections between local networks and the cloud. Users can access Azure resources as if they were on their local network, ensuring data security and encryption.
A VPN (Virtual Private Network) is a technology that creates a secure, encrypted connection between a device and a network through the Internet. A VPN gateway, on the other hand, is a device or service that manages these connections, allowing secure traffic between different networks.
Azure VPN Gateway is a managed service that allows you to securely connect local networks to Azure using encrypted VPN tunnels. Thanks to standard protocols such as IPsec and SSL/TLS, it ensures the protection and integrity of data during transit.
Azure VPN offers two main ways to connect. The Site-to-Site connection connects a local network to an Azure virtual network using an IPSec/IKE tunnel. The Point-to-Site connection allows individual devices, such as laptops or PCs, to connect directly to the Azure virtual network through a VPN client.
Azure VPN Gateway supports IKEv1 and IKEv2 protocols for Site-to-Site and Point-to-Site connections, OpenVPN for Point-to-Site connections, and SSTP (Secure Socket Tunneling Protocol) only for Point-to-Site connections.
Yes, Azure VPN eliminates the need to buy and manage a physical VPN device, offering a scalable, fully managed solution in the cloud.
Azure VPN guarantees advanced security thanks to data encryption, supports scalability based on business needs, and offers redundancy with active-active and active-passive configurations to ensure business continuity. It is a managed service, so it simplifies the management of the VPN without the need for physical hardware and it integrates perfectly with other Microsoft services such as Azure ExpressRoute.
To configure a Site-to-Site connection, you must create a virtual network on Azure, set up an Azure VPN Gateway, configure the on-premises VPN device with the correct parameters, and establish the VPN tunnel between the local network and Azure.
The cost of Azure VPN depends on several factors, including the hourly rate for the VPN gateway, the number of simultaneous Point-to-Site connections over 128, and the bandwidth used for outgoing traffic from the virtual network. Microsoft offers a 30-day free trial with a credit of 200 USD to test the service.
For those who need better performing and dedicated connections, Azure offers ExpressRoute, a solution that allows direct private connections between on-premises infrastructure and Azure without going through the Internet.
Yes, Azure VPN supports deployment in multiple regions, allowing businesses to establish secure and redundant network connections between different geographies to ensure optimal performance and business continuity.
Azure VPN is an ideal solution for SMEs that need a secure connection between their local networks and the cloud without having to invest in complex hardware or expensive network infrastructure.
The Infra & Security team focuses on the management and evolution of our customers' Microsoft Azure tenants. Besides configuring and managing these tenants, the team is responsible for creating application deployments through DevOps pipelines. It also monitors and manages all security aspects of the tenants and supports Security Operations Centers (SOC).
