Does anybody know how to "reset" the VPN tunnel of Windows Azure Virtual Network? The networking guys here are asking me to do so. What they mean is to "refresh" the connection. Since I'm not a VPN expert I don't fully understand this request. They told me this is frecuent when configuring VPN tunnels on hardware VPN concentrators (such as Cisco, Juniper, etc).
With Windows Azure Virtual Network, once you configured the VPN connection the connection is available all the time and if by any reason the connection was down, the tunnel should typically be automatically reestablished.
Also once you configure the VPN, the tunnel reestablished within a few seconds. Also sometime the connectivity status may not update on portal immediately as portal update happens in about 5 mins however the VPN may be established underneath. Users are not able to refresh the VPN by portal or using Powershell at this point.
Adding onto Avkash's response, Azure will attempt to establish a VPN tunnels with your on-premise device periodically, so there is no need for manual steps on your device.
To dive a bit into the internals, the Azure gateway attempts to establish an IPsec tunnel. To create this tunnel, the Azure gateway and your VPN device needs to negotiate a series of security associations. These are called Phase 1 (isakmp) and Phase 2 (ipsec) SAs. These SAs contains mutually agreed upon parameters (security keys, lifetimes, etc) that both device will use to encrypt packets between the two endpoints.
When you say that you want to "reset" your connection, I'm assuming you're looking for steps to clear and renegotiate these SAs. You can do this from your device's side, by issuing the following commands after logging into your device. This should notify the Azure side and cause renegotiation to occur.
Cisco ASA & ISR devices
clear crypto isakmp sa
clear crypto ipsec sa
Juniper SSG/ISG devices
clear ike all
Juniper SRX/J devices
clear security ike security-associations
Related
I'm trying to setup a VPN connection from a VLAN in Azure to on-premise. We have two different ISP's on-premise and I want to setup Azure with a VPN connecting to both so that if the primary ISP is down Azure will try to connect using the secondary.
The problem is that I can't add two gateways to a single VLAN, and the one gateway will not let me add two VPN connection with the same IP address range. I can understand that if I wanted both to be active, but I want one to be standby and only used if the first disconnects.
Is this even possible? Any pointers would be great?
I have been looking at https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/vpn-gateway/vpn-gateway-highlyavailable#a-name--activeactiveonpremamultiple-on-premises-vpn-devices but that only covers active-active setup which is not what I want.
I want both VNET resouces and on-premise resources to reach each other via the same IP addresses no matter if it's the primary or secondary VPN that's connected.
I know that Azure has fail over on it's side via a standby gateway, but I want fail over when on-premise is down, not Azure.
Update
I know that Azure has fail over on it's side via a standby gateway,
but I want fail over when on-premise is down, not Azure.
Unfortunately, there is not an auto solution for on-premise failover, you could manually perform, which is the same as If the on-premises gateway IP change need to update the same entry. You need to update the local network gateway (Including the On-premises gateway IP and private range ) on the Azure side and the ISP settings where VPN is connected on the on-premise side. Please expect some downtime, because IPSEC session of ISAKMP, PH1 and PH2 Will again take place.
Besides, If you have more than one ISP and need a redundant connection to the Azure. Azure now supports redundant Site to Site VPNs.
Support multiple tunnels between a VNet and an on-premises site with automatic failover based on BGP
You can establish multiple connections between your Azure VNet and
your on-premises VPN devices in the same location. This capability
provides multiple tunnels (paths) between the two networks in an
active-active configuration. If one of the tunnels is disconnected,
the corresponding routes will be withdrawn via BGP and the traffic
automatically shifts to the remaining tunnels.
The following diagram shows a simple example of this highly available setup:
NOTE
BGP is supported on Azure VpnGw1, VpnGw2, VpnGw3, Standard and HighPerformance VPN gateways. Basic SKU is NOT supported.
BGP is supported on Route-Based VPN gateways only.
We have a client who wants to connect their premises to Azure. Their main hindrance at this point is determining the best way to connect to Azure given their current connectivity configuration. They have two redundant ISP connections going to the head office for internet access. They want to be able to configure a VPN connection to Azure that would operate in a similar way i.e. if ISP A went down it would seamlessly use ISP B and vice versa. The normal multi-site VPN configuration does not fit this since there is one local network behind which means the network behind separate VPNs over each ISP would have overlapping IP address ranges which is not supported. Is such a configuration possible? (See diagram below)
Either that or is there a way to abstract the two ISP connections onto one VPN connection to Azure.
They’re currently considering using a Cisco ASA device to help with this. I’m not familiar with the features of this device so I cannot verify if it will solve their issue. I know there is also a Cisco ASAv appliance in the Azure marketplace don't know if that could also be a part of a possible solution if they went with such a device.
required vpn configuration
The Site-to-Site VPN capability in Azure does not allow for automatic failover between ISPs.
What you could do are the following
- Have automation task created that would re-create the local network and gateway connection upon failover. Manual and would take some RTO to get it up and running
- Use the Cisco CSRs to create a DMVPN mesh. You should be able to achieve the configuration you want using that option. You would use UDRs in Azure to ensure proper routing
I havent done it in Azure, but here is what you do in AWS (And I am sure there would be parallel in Azure)
Configure a "detached VGW" (virtual Private gateway) in aws. Use DMVPN cloud to connect CSRs to multi-site on-prem.
Also, for failover between ISPs you could have a look at DNS load balancing via a parallel to AWS's Route 53 in Azure.
Reference thread :
https://serverfault.com/questions/872700/vpc-transit-difference-between-detached-vgw-and-direct-ipsec-connection-csr100
I'm trying to setup a VPN for internet access purposes (I'm in china behind the the great firewall) but I'm not an networking expert.
Someone out of China who has an Azure subscription created a package for allowing me to connect to that VPN with the related pfx certificate and so far everything, seems to be good, the connection can be achieved with a server located in Europe, the VPN server is 172.16.0.1 the VPN Client is within a range 172.16.0.X.
About the package creation he followed: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/kaevans/archive/2015/06/05/configure-a-point-to-site-vpn-connection-to-an-azure-vnet.aspx
However, when I'm connected to the VPN I do not have any way to access to Google, I'm struggling to affirm whether it is a configuration on my side or just the GFW that is messing up. I'm struggling about my configuration cause it seems that there is no real connection with that newly defined connection:
I can ping the related server server when I'm connected to the VPN but there is no way to get access to google.com, however the DNS resolution name lookup seems to work at least.
Being connected to the VPN the lookup operation gives a me an appropriate result
and while I'm not connected to the almighty VPN:
I can still ping the VPN server when connected and vice versa when I'm not, which is quite normal:
Is there any way to check and settle that the internet access is passing through the VPN? I'm also thinking whether this can result from a routing issue, but when checking route print I obtain the following list, but I don't really see anything wrong:
Unfortunately Azure VPN Gateway drops any packets destined for the internet. It is not supported.
On Azure, http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/virtual-networks-create-site-to-site-cross-premises-connectivity/
the following is stated in relation to site to site connectivity.
A VPN device with a public IPv4 address. You'll need the IP address in
order to complete the wizard.
The VPN device cannot be located behind a network address translator
(NAT) and must meet the minimum device standards.
I'm assuming this is accurate, but could anyone confirm? it seems very limiting, since my peer vpn device can support NAT-T. Does the Azure VPN g/w device support IPsec NAT-T?
Is the same restriction applicable to point to site, where my peer is the point and I want to connect/be connected to by the Azure VPN gateway device with VNet behind the Azure VPN g/w device.
thank you.
I don't see to be limiting at all. And yes, this is the case. It is on the official documentation before all.
When talk about Point-to-Site, I believe you missunderstand the service a bit. Azure Point-to-Site connectivity allows a single computer or laptop (named Point) to connect to Azure VPN Gateway (Site). In that case, the client only has to be connected to the internet.
When you connect to Azure VPN Gateway, you will be part of the whole Azure Virtual Network that Gateway connects.
To tell you the truth I am not sure that the Azure VPN gateway device supports IPSec NAT of any kind at all, whether Point-to-Site or Site-to-Site. Below are my findings. My best lead so far is finding #4.
In all my research over the past week, it seems like it’s presently impossible to achieve this with Azure. See https://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/19eb5ac0-5fb1-4afa-8081-5afc32cb04fd/is-nat-supported-within-an-ipsec-vpn-connection?forum=WAVirtualMachinesVirtualNetwork. According to this, “At the moment there cannot be a IPSec VPN connection established when either of the devices involve NAT. . .you cannot have an on premise VPN device behind a NAT and this cannot be applied on a VNet gateway since customers will not have access to configuring such rules for a VPN gateway.” That was April 2017.
In fact, in February 2017, Microsoft seemed to discard any chances we have of applying NAT over VPN. On their feedback forum at https://feedback.azure.com/forums/217313-networking/suggestions/5525129-please-make-site-to-site-vpn-avaiable-for-devices, an Azure Networking Team member declines the possibility of Site-to-Site VPN for devices behind a NAT. So Site-to-Site is not expected, which is where it makes the most sense because it would help resolve common subnet overlap issues between a cloud virtual network and an on-premises hardware network. I'm not so sure how NAT over VPN would benefit a Point-to-Site situation (what's the application?)
Then, contradictorily as of December 2017 (later that year), Microsoft seems to announce they’re just now in the planning stages to implement this for Azure (see https://feedback.azure.com/forums/217313-networking/suggestions/15488244-offer-nat-as-a-service).
Only on http://nullsession.com/2015/02/02/connecting-to-your-azure-site-to-site-vpn-over-nat/, I found a method from 2017 that is, “unsupported by Microsoft – but works according to RFC.” I’m still processing this but I’m not convinced I should try it because it’s unsupported.
Let me know what you think because I am personally trying to get a satisfactory solution for this too.
I am running a few machines and we services in Windows azure that I would like to lock off to the rest of the world because of the confidential data that is on there. I have a few small things that make it harder to get at, but I would like to setup a VPN to lock it down. If I set up a VPN service on one of the VM's would I then be able to latch onto the virtual network I have setup there? What is the process in setting this up?
If your cloud service is in a VNET you can create a VPN gateway and connect to it using either a Site-to-Site VPN or a Point-to-Site VPN. The former is IT focused, requiring VPN router configuration - the latter is developer focused, and requires minimal configuration. When using either form of VPN it is possible to take your cloud service completely off the internet for inbound traffic - outbound traffic can go out regardless of what endpoints you define for your VM.