Azure VNet Peering Preview Now Available

One of the networking features that I liked AWS over Azure for was the ease of peering VPCs together. As a quick primer, an AWS VPC is basically your own private cloud within AWS, with subnets and instances and all that good stuff. Azure VNets are very similar in that they are a logical grouping of subnets, instances, address spaces, etc. Previously, to link VNets together, you had to use a VPN connection. That’s all well and good, but it’s a little bit clunky and in my opinion, is not as elegant as VPC peering.

Anyway, Microsoft has recently announced that VNet peering within a region is now available as a preview feature. This means that it’s available for you to try out, but be warned it’s pre-release software (much like a beta programme) and it’s a bit warts and all. It’s not meant to be used for production purposes and it is not covered by any SLAs.

The benefits of VNet peering include:-

• Eliminates need for VPN connections between VNets
• Connect ASM and ARM networks together
• High speed connectivity across the Azure backbone between VNets

Many of the same restrictions that govern the use of VPC peering in AWS apply here too to VNet peering, including:-

• Peering must occur in the same region
• There is no transitive peering between VNets (VNet A is peered to VNet B but not to VNet C. VNet B is peered to VNet C but VNet A has no peer to VNet C)
• There must be no overlap in the IP address space

While VNet peering is in preview, there is no charge for this service. Take a look at the documentation and give it a spin, in the test environment, obviously 😉