I am trying to solve a problem. I have to access APIs that are hosted on my on premises server (on-prem) from Azure hosted Web API.
The problem is that my on-prem server only allows white listed IPs. I know we can get outbound IPs from our Web App (Azure hosted). But I am not sure whether they are static or will change based on scaling.
Another Solution is to create VNET and add that Web app into that VNET. But I would like someone to suggest better solutions.
There are couple of choices you have.
First, you can have a look at the possibleOutboundIpAddress of your App Service and whitelist this IPs. This however also opens up the door for IPs not really in use by your App Service.
az webapp show --resource-group <group_name> --name <app_name> --query possibleOutboundIpAddresses --output tsv
Secondly, you can put a NAT Gateway in-front of your App Service. This however requires an App Service Plan that supports virtual network integration.
Configure regional virtual network integration from within your app service.
Force all outbound traffic originating from that app to travel through the virtual network. This is done by setting WEBSITE_VNET_ROUTE_ALL=1 property in your web app configuration
Create a public IP address.
Add a NAT gateway, attach it to the subnet that contains the app service and make use of the public IP created in step 3.
If you would also like to use a static inbound IP you can find more information here
The outbound IPs for Azure App service are generally static and will not change on scaling. There are normally 4 outbound IPs and they only change if you change the SKU or there is a need at MS end to increase the capacity of their data center (rare or may never happen in near future).
I would recommend creating a VNET as that is more secure than whitelisting IPs at your on prem service. But if you want to want list the outbound IPs, I would recommend creating a wrapper for your on prem APIs in Azure and whitelist IPs for these in your on prem firewall. This will ensure that you don't have to whitelist every time you want to create an API in Azure that needs to access on prem APIs.
Unfortunately there is no straight forward way to do this in Azure for App Services, I also had this issue recently.
The only solution (for now anyway) is to add the list of outbound IPs of the App Service to your allow rules.
Just be careful with scaling between the tiers because it will change the outbound IP addresses. (https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/app-service/overview-inbound-outbound-ips#when-outbound-ips-change)
The simplest way would be to use an Azure VM with a static public IP which is used for both inbound and outbound.
Sam Cogan has a good blog post where he does go through a couple of options.
(https://samcogan.com/obtaining-a-static-outbound-ip-from-an-azure-virtual-network/)
A hybrid connection might be a solution https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/app-service/app-service-hybrid-connections? I think they are designed for accessing on premise services.
Related
I deploy my web application to an App Service instance on Premium tier. My web application makes outbound requests to external resources on the Internet.
In order to secure the connection with one of these external resources so I can reach it with a private IP address, my plan is to create a Site-to-Site VPN from Azure to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (where the external resource resides). Then, I plan to use the VNET Integration for outbound traffic and connect my App Service to my VPN.
My question is - will the web application still be able to reach the other external resources on the Internet with their public IPs? I believe the answer is related to routing tables but I can't wrap my mind around it.
Just because you integrate a Regional VNet (I'm assuming) doesn't mean the app service won't be able to make outbound connections. Pretty much like
When you integrate your app service with your VNet that has the site-to-site VPN, traffic from your app service will traverse the Azure network rather than going out to internet, assuming your app service is using an RFC1918 address for your infrastructure. If you want to secure the traffic even further, then your app service would need to be hosted inside an App Service Environment
I'm trying to secure my containerized web app with a Premium V2 App Service Plan. I've enabled Service Endpoints for an integration subnet for the different App Services to restrict incoming traffic from each other except for the frontend (so all of them are integrated with the VNet and all have incoming traffic restricted to that VNet except for the frontend).
I have also other Azure services like Azure Functions or a Storage Account that can have inbound traffic restricted by using those Service Endpoints. However, One of the App Services calls an external 3rd party API that lies on Azure too. That API may or not be behind a static IP. However, it has a Custom Domain associated.
The problem arises when I try to connect to that API from one of the VNet integrated App Services. As the destination IP is inside one of the IP ranges that are added to the routing with the use of a Service Endpoint, traffic is sent via that Service Endpoint instead of simple Azure routing. I've tried overriding the route with a Route Table associated to that subnet but that seems not to be possible, with or without a NAT Gateway attached to the subnet. I guess Azure routing is prioritized here. I'm sure the route is not effective as I used it on a different subnet where I deployed a VM.
Is there any way I can use that Service Endpoint for my internal traffic only so it's not used when it goes to an Azure hosted API or I need to switch to a different approach like Private Endpoints or an ASE?
I am unsure what you're looking for but if you want to explicitly define routes you should try using app services setting "WEBSITE_VNET_ROUTE_ALL" = 1 which overrides the default precedence of routing and makes sure that every outbound call follows the route defined inside route table of subnet.
Use the following steps to add the WEBSITE_VNET_ROUTE_ALL setting in your app:
Go to the Configuration UI in your app portal. Select New application setting.
Enter WEBSITE_VNET_ROUTE_ALL in the Name box, and enter 1 in the Value box.
When WEBSITE_VNET_ROUTE_ALL is set to 1, outbound traffic is still sent from the addresses that are listed in your app properties, unless you provide routes that direct the traffic elsewhere.
We've been able to ask the 3rd party to disable blocking rules. It turns out they had a rule that blocked this specific traffic.
I already tried changing that setting, but didn't try putting a route table on it. However, it'd make no difference as I can't define a list of allowed outbound IPs belonging to Azure since we have no static IP to call.
I have two NodeJS App Services.
They can connect to each other with no problem using the URL which is created for App Services by default. (That is through the public internet.)
Then I successfully enabled VNet Integration for both App Services, and assigned the same VNet and also subnet two both of them.
How should I modify the connection URL now to connect to appservice2 from appservice1 (without using the URLs which are publicly available on the internet)?
I could not find any host name or IP address information in Azure Portal using which I could have successfully established the connection.
Thanks for any suggestions!
When you want two app services to connect to each other over a private network, there are generally two steps you have to take to set this up correctly. Note that the app service URL will always stay the same, it is only the networking part that changes.
Both app services should have vnet integration enabled, which allows the app service to route its traffic through the vnet.
If you want others (e.g. another app service) to connect to an app service via a vnet you can choose between:
a) Service endpoints
b) Private endpoints
Reading your question, I assume you completed the first step correctly. But you have to complete either step 2a or 2b to get this to work properly. I would recommend you choose service endpoints because they are more straightforward than working with private endpoints. Below you'll find a detailed description and considerations for every step.
1. Vnet Integration
The subnet you use as an integration subnet has to be a dedicated subnet. This means it is only used for vnet integration.
Only one app service plan can be used with this dedicated subnet, this one app service plan may include multiple app services.
If there is a network security group attached to that subnet, it needs to allow outbound traffic.
If there is an azure firewall attached to your vnet and you want to make a call to a public endpoint, it should allow outbound traffic.
Vnet route all should be enabled if you want all the outbound traffic to travel over the vnet.
If you want to read more, I would recommend reading this documentation.
Here is a simple example of how you would create vnet integration by selecting the dedicated subnet:
Service Endpoints
Service endpoints allow you to lock down inbound access to your app so that the source address must come from a set of subnets that you select.
Service endpoints are automatically provisioned by azure when you enable access restrictions to the app service.
This is a much simpler alternative to private endpoints.
Does not work in large-scale networks where you want to connect from an on-prem network to an azure vnet.
You may turn to this documentation to read about all the features and limitations of service endpoints.
Here is an example of how you would enable services endpoints for your app service by creating an access restriction:
Private Endpoints
Private endpoints also need a subnet, but you can connect as many private endpoints to the subnet as there are IP addresses available.
When you use private endpoints, you also need to have a private DNS zone. Otherwise, the app service URL does not resolve correctly to an IP address.
Private endpoints are more complex than service endpoints because of the extra subnet and DNS requirements.
Here is a nice tutorial that let's you set up an app service with private endpoint.
The following example shows you how to create a private endpoint for your app service. You have the option to let azure create a private DNS zone automatically, or you can do this manually:
If you want to access app services without public internet, then enabling VNET integration in those services alone won't be enough. You need to create a private endpoint that provides the IP from the virtual network to access the app service internally within the VNET and it also disables public access to the app service over the internet. Also please be aware that the private endpoint implementation will have some cost implications as well.
If your requirement is just to establish a secure connection between your virtual network & app service and to avoid access over the public internet, a service endpoint is the simplest solution. If you also need to access the app service from on-premises through an express route or Azure Gateway, a regionally peered virtual network, or a globally peered virtual network, Private Endpoint is the solution.
Steps to set up a service endpoint are detailed in the provisioning service endpoint link
Steps to set up a private endpoint are detailed in the connect to the web app using private endpoint link
Also if you want to deep dive into private endpoint configuration for app service, I would recommend you to read through the following tutorial
We have three App Services in Azure (API1, API2, API3).
API2 is getting data from CosmosDB.
API3 is getting data from other CosmosDB.
Main API1 calls API2 to get some data. Then using this data calls API3.
We have poor performance of API1 and we are trying to figure out why. We noticed that there are too many connections in metrics. Also we have issue with SNAT ports.
We tried to setup these APIs to the same VNet but it doesn't help and we are not sure how to set up it correctly.
Do you have any idea what we should setup?
UPDATE:
Seems like VNet helped us with SNAT ports issue but performance of API was still very poor.
What really helped us was change from Windows to Linux. When all APIs runs on the Linux servers we don't see any connections anymore.
Not sure what's specific configurations about three APIs on your side. If you want to use IP from Vnet instead of an external one, you can use a separate environment ASE.
Alternatively, you can use a private link to the app service. By using Private Endpoint, you can connect privately to your web app. Read Connect privately to a web app by using Azure Private Endpoint (Preview).
Today, you can secure this connection using VNet service endpoints
which keep the traffic within the Microsoft backbone network and allow
the PaaS resource to be locked down to just your VNet. However, the
PaaS endpoint is still served over a public IP address and therefore
not reachable from on-premises through Azure ExpressRoute private
peering or VPN gateway. With today’s announcement of Azure Private
Link, you can simply create a private endpoint in your VNet and map it
to your PaaS resource (Your Azure Storage account blob or SQL Database
server). These resources are then accessible over a private IP address
in your VNet, enabling connectivity from on-premises through Azure
ExpressRoute private peering and/or VPN gateway and keep the network
configuration simple by not opening it up to public IP addresses.
For more information, you could read here.
I've created an Azure container instance with a Private IP. This is connected to a VNET so my Web Apps can communicate with it in a secure way. (This API has Bearer tokens also but I don't want to make it public).
However, when restarting the Container I get a new IP. Therefore I have to update the Env and restart my apps.
Is there a way to implement service discovery within Azure, so my Web Apps (and other services) know where this Container Instance is, especially when the container gets a new IP.
I am used to dealing with Pivotal and Consul but under Azure I don't have these tools.
In Pivotal I was able to fire up multiple instances and the platform would auto discover and load balance. At the moment, Azure feels very manual :(
Does azure have the ability to register a service under a host name that can then auto resolve?
Does Azure support load balancing when multiple instances are started with the same name?
For this kind of work maybe the best solution is to create an Azure service web app. The web app as public static IP link to your plan which does not change.
Inbound and outbound IP addresses in Azure App Service
With this solution your IP never change.
According to the documentation linked, you can find your inbound IP like this:
nslookup <app-name>.azurewebsites.net
and the outbound IP in powershell:
(Get-AzWebApp -ResourceGroup <group_name> -name <app_name>).OutboundIpAddresses