Day Two Cloud 097: Azure Cloud Networking Essentials

On today’s episode we peel back the covers on networking in Azure. We get details on the ability to inspect packets in Azure and the use of third-party virtual appliances, the role of network security groups, the design implications of how Azure spans its availability zones, and the use of network peering and private links to connect to the cloud. We also get into options for SSL termination, Virtual WAN, point-to-point VPNs, and Azure’s VPN gateway. Our guest is Pierre Roman, Sr Cloud Ops Advocate at Microsoft. This is not a sponsored episode. Pierre’s cloud networking takeaway: Did you think about it first? Show Links: @wiredcanuck – Pierre Roman on Twitter Step-By-Step: Connect your AWS and Azure environments with a VPN tunnel – Updated – Argon Systems Microsoft Docs Library – Microsoft ITOpsTalk.com IT OpsTalk – Discord IT OpsTalk – YouTube Transcript: [00:00:03.610] – Ned Welcome to Day Two Cloud. Today’s topic is what’s going on with Azure networking these days, and we’ve got a great guest, Pierre Roman. He’s the senior cloud ops advocate at Microsoft and he has been doing networking for, I think he said, almost 30 years or maybe more than 30 years. So the man knows his way around a packet. What stood out to you, Ethan? [00:00:26.380] – Ethan Pierre does indeed know his way around a packet and he’s got a good sense of humor. He’s thoughtful. He is not shy about saying what’s on his mind either. Now, despite all that stuff that he knows Ned, I did manage to stump him with a question he did not know the answer to. And you can have to wait to the end of the show to find out what that was. But I don’t think I was proud of myself. It’s like, oh, wow, the guy there’s something he doesn’t actually know off the top of his head because he was amazing. [00:00:49.880] – Ned Yeah, absolutely fantastic, so enjoy the conversation with Pierre Roman from Microsoft. Well, Pierre, thank you so much for joining us today. Let’s get right into it. You’re a fellow human and we want to know a little bit more about you. So what would you say you do around here? [00:01:09.140] – Pierre What do I do around here? Well, first of all, I’ve been in IT for well, over 30 years, OK, aging myself a little. [00:01:19.470] – Ned It’s all right. [00:01:20.310] – Pierre It started with, like, deploying Novell, I think it was one point seven. [00:01:27.200] – Ethan I thought I was an old guy with Novell 3.11. One point seven? Wow. OK. [00:01:31.830] – Pierre Yeah. Where you had to recompile the server kernel for every time you wanted to change the network interface card because there was no drivers there was built into the kernel. Wow. That was fun. So I’ve seen a lot of like the changes over the years and from back then when we’ve been we were actually having to do every little nitty gritty detail of all of the networking to now just saying connect from here to here and go. Which I which I love, by the way. [00:02:06.410] – Ethan But there’s a little more to it than that Pierre, but, you know, I know what you’re saying. [00:02:09.500] – Pierre