With the new VNet integration mode (currently in Preview), what are now the pros (and/or cons) of chosing external ASE instead ?
Thank you
VNet Integration is often used to enable access from apps to a databases and web services running in your VNet. With VNet Integration, you don't need to expose a public endpoint for applications on your VM but can use the private non-internet routable addresses instead.
There are some things that VNet Integration doesn't support including:
mounting a drive
AD integration
NetBios
private site access
accessing resources across ExpressRoute
accessing resources across Service Endpoints
If you have an External ASE, the publish VIP is also the endpoint that your ASE resolve to.
With VNet Integration, you don't need to expose a public endpoint for applications on your VM but can use the private non-internet routable addresses instead.
App-assigned IP-based SSL addresses: Only possible with an External ASE and when IP-based SSL is configured. With an External ASE, you can assign IP addresses to individual apps.
Public inbound IP address: Used for app traffic in an External ASE, and management traffic in both an External ASE and an ILB ASE.
For more details, you could refer to this article.
Related
If I am setting up an Azure SQL Database in a vnet which Azure App Service and Azure Function will access. Is using both Subnet Delegation and Service Endpoints the right way to go? I didn't fully understand the documentation.
Regarding subnet delegation, I read this Microsoft article and this stackoverflow post, which stated:
When you delegate a subnet to an Azure service, you allow that service to establish some basic network configuration rules for that subnet, which help the Azure service operate their instances in a stable manner.
That sounds like a good thing but makes me wonder how it worked efficiently w/o subnet delegation.
As for Service Endpoints, I read this Microsoft article, which states:
Virtual Network (VNet) service endpoint provides secure and direct connectivity to Azure services over an optimized route over the Azure backbone network. Endpoints allow you to secure your critical Azure service resources to only your virtual networks. Service Endpoints enables private IP addresses in the VNet to reach the endpoint of an Azure service without needing a public IP address on the VNet.
Does that mean I cannot reach the Azure SQL Database from my home machine w/a firewall rule?
They both sound like they have the same benefits and I'm struggling to understand the difference. I suppose the larger question is should I enable both for the simple architecture outlined above.
In the Microsoft service endpoints documentation they also mention:
Microsoft recommends use of Azure Private Link for secure and private access to services hosted on Azure platform. For more information, see Azure Private Link.
For some reason that seems like an Azure to on-premise thing.
• You cannot use a ‘Subnet Delegation’ along with a ‘Private endpoint’ since that subnet is delegated for the said service, in your case, the Azure SQL Database. Through a subnet delegation, you can define the NSG association for it, as well as associate multiple delegated subnets to a common NSG. You can also define the IP Address space for the delegated subnet, the route table association with it, the custom DNS entry configuration in Azure DNS as well as define the minimum number of IP Addresses available for that delegated subnet. Similarly, with regards to service endpoint, these stated functions are not available.
• In service endpoint, you do not have control over the routing mechanism as well as the IP address related allotment, reservation, or configuration. Also, managing DNS entries for the resources managed through them and controlling them through a firewall or NAT gateway isn’t required unlike a subnet delegation because all these things are managed by Microsoft Azure’s backbone network on your behalf.
Thus, both have their own features and specifications for enabling you to configure according to your own requirements.
Does that mean I cannot reach the Azure SQL Database from my home machine w/a firewall rule?
Yes, you will have to create a firewall rule to allow the access from on-premises system to Azure SQL Server/Database and configure the service endpoint accordingly to allow the VPN client IP Addresses for accessing the same over public internet.
Also, through Azure private link, you won’t be able to connect from on-premises to Azure as it uses a private IP address and a private DNS zone entry related to it to connect to Azure resources in the same virtual network.
To know more regarding the configuration of Azure service access from on-premises network, kindly refer to the below given link: -
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-network/virtual-network-service-endpoints-overview#secure-azure-service-access-from-on-premises
Also, refer to the below snapshots regarding the configuration and selection of service endpoint for a particular subnet: -
Why do we have to create a new subnet or add the app service to an empty subnet in our vnet?
I don't understand the reasoning since I'm trying to use my app service (function app) as a reverse proxy to access the resources in the vnet.
By default, the Azure function is a PaaS as the other Azure Platform-as-a-Services that have inbound and outbound traffic over the Internet. We can host our applications without the need to worry about the maintenance of the servers and their operating systems.
To use Azure Functions to connect to resources in an Azure virtual network, we can use the VNet integration feature. To use this feature, we need to create a subnet in the virtual network for your function app to use. VNet Integration must be configured to use an empty subnet. It doesn't matter that your functions use a different subnet than your VM. The virtual network automatically routes traffic between the two subnets. Read Connect your function app to the virtual network
The extra empty subnet is used to hosting your app instance. To let the app instance outbound traffic work like from a VNet, Azure mounts NICs with assigned private IP addresses in that subnet. With VNet integration, your function app is connected to both the internet and your virtual network.
For more information, you may read How regional VNet Integration works and How gateway-required VNet Integration works
For an app to access resources in a Virtual Network, it needs to be either part of that network, or use a VPN gateway, which in turn can be used access resources inside the Virtual Network.
App Services provides 2 methods to communicate with resources in the Virtual Network:
Regional VNet Integration
Gateway-Required VNet Integration
With Regional VNet Integration, the infrastructure allocates a private IP interface on the VM that is hosting your Web App. This interface is allocated an IP address from the integrated subnets address prefix. This interface is later used to communicate with the VNet hosted resources. This is in a way similar to how IaaS VM work, however the limitation of this interface is that it can be only used for making outbound connections.
This way, if the ASP is configured to scale out to multiple VM's then each VM is allocated a corresponding private IP interface. However, the allocation of these IP address is limited to the subnets Address prefix. Nancy has already included this in her post. App Services have overlapped recycling so during scale up/maintenance, the App Service Plan may run on twice the number of VM's to ensure minimal downtime. However this also means, that the Integrated Subnet should have sufficient addresses available, so that these allocations can happen.
The IP Address of this interface is exposed via the environment variable WEBSITE_PRIVATE_IP. Here is a screenshot of my Kudu Console
If your site is running on multiple instances, then you can use the Instance menu to toggle through the instances.
With Gateway-required VNet Integration, there is a pre-requisite of provisioning a Virtual Network route-based gateway configured with an SSTP point-to-site VPN. In this case, the VM's hosting the Web App download the VPN package on the respective VM's to setup a VPN, and this is used to connect to the resources in the Virtual Network.
Even here, you can use the WEBSITE_PRIVATE_IP environment variable to see the IP Address used by the VPN client on the App Service VM.
HTH,
Kaushal
We have set up a VPN gateway and used it to connect an on-premise network with an Azure VNet. We have successfully tested a number of scenarios
communication from VMs to on-premise DBs
communication from on-premise computers (desktops and servers) to VMs (SSH etc.)
communication from on-premise computers (desktops and servers) to services with Private Link endpoints (App Serivces, DBs etc.).
The use-case we are now attempting is to access an on-premise DB from an app-service. I have integrated the app-service to the routed VNet and also added a service endpoint to this VNet. I have seen infos that this should work but it is not getting though.
A second question is what is the actual source ip of the app-service when it connects to the on-premise server. Surely not the outbound IPs? These are non-exclusive public IPs. Opening these on our VPN firewall would be a risk. In this case is the solution to also give the app service in question a private link endpoint. Will it's source IP then be the private IP of the PL?
Private Endpoint is only used for incoming flows to your Web App. Outgoing flows will not use this Private Endpoint, but you can inject outgoing flows to your network in a different subnet through the VNet integration feature. When you enable Private Endpoint to your Web App, the access restrictions configuration of the Web App is not evaluated. So in this case, I don't think you need to set the service endpoint Microsoft.Web for your web app if you have set it. Reference from using Azure private endpoint for Azure web app.
When regional VNet Integration is enabled, your app makes outbound calls to the internet through the outbound addresses that are listed in the app properties portal. Regional VNet Integration works by mounting virtual interfaces with addresses in the delegated subnet. If WEBSITE_VNET_ROUTE_ALL is set to 1, all outbound traffic can be sent into your VNet. So the source IP address will be from the integrated subnet when app service comes to the on-premise server as the #silent's comment. Reference from how regional VNet Integration works. Please note that the feature supports only one regional VNet Integration per App Service plan.
I have created one Web app on Azure portal and its integrated with subnet under specific VNET.
Now, when I am trying to do telnet to one of my organisation's internal relay server IP from my web app its not getting connected. The request is going from web app's APIPA address range not from subnet's address range. I checked the IP as well of the web app using ifconfig and I found out that its taking from APIPA address range not from subnet one.
Any idea what steps do I need to take so that web app will take IP from subnet address range of the VNET not from APIPA address range.
Thanks in advance.
After my validation, when the app service on Linux is integrated with a virtual network. There is an extra NIC binding to the app service. It's IP address from APIPA address range. It looks like a design behavior as the app service on Linux is running in a standard Docker Container, read here. Also, for a normal app service is a multi-tenant environment, you can not get a dedicated IP address unless you are using a dedicated environment---ASE, read here.
Furthermore, from how regional VNet Integration works, you will see the app service integrated with a vNet is not the same as a VM from a VNet.
Regional VNet Integration works by mounting virtual interfaces with
addresses in the delegated subnet. Because the from address is in your
VNet, it can access most things in or through your VNet like a VM in
your VNet would. The networking implementation is different than
running a VM in your VNet. That's why some networking features aren't
yet available for this feature.
In this case, if you wan assign a private IP address for app service, you can use Azure Private Endpoint with web apps(Preview). Read this blog for more details.
Azure Private Endpoint provides private IP address access by using a
network interface controller (NIC) attached to a virtual network
subnet for an Azure web app, allowing access from an on-premise VPN or
ExpressRoute. Implementing an endpoint effectively blocks the public
inbound access. This technology is very similar to an internal App
Service Environment (ASE) but much cheaper.
I am running a Linux container as a web app in an internal ASE.
The ASE is deployed to a Vnet (secondary Vnet) which is peered to a another Vnet(Primary vnet) where an Azure firewall exists.
1.I have Enable service endpoints to SQL, Storage, and Event Hub on your ASE subnet.
2.From the Azure Firewall UI > Rules > Application rule collection, Set App Service Environment FQDN Tag and the Windows Update Tag.
3.From the Azure Firewall UI > Rules > Network rule collection, Set the ports to 123.Create another rule the same way to port 12000 to help triage any system issues.
4.Create a route table with the management addresses from App Service Environment management addresses with a next hop of Internet, set 0.0.0.0/0 directed to the network appliance ( Firewall internal IP address)
5.Create Application rules to allow HTTP/HTTPS traffic (Note: address is the IP of the ILB of the Internal ASE, since I cant find an IP for the web app itself)
I don't seem to be able to reach the web app. Any guidance will be appreciated. is the problem that I created an Internal ASE?
I am trying to isolate the ISE and control external access to it via a firewall.
MSDocs I referenced :https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/app-service/environment/firewall-integration
Yes, I think it's the problem with internal ASE. Also, the referring document is intended to lock down all egress from the ASE VNet. Inbound management traffic for an ASE can not be sent through a firewall device.
There are a number of inbound dependencies that an ASE has. The
inbound management traffic cannot be sent through a firewall device.
The source addresses for this traffic are known and are published in
the App Service Environment management addresses document. You can
create Network Security Group rules with that information to secure
inbound traffic.
In addition, since it's an internal ASE, it is deployed in your VNet with ILB. You can not directly access its backend web app over the Internet, you need at least a public-facing Ip address (external VIP )or other public-facing services(Public Azure application gateway) in front of it.
It will like this,