Azure Virtual WAN - Simply Explained

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Welcome to another episode of Microsoft Knowledge Nuggets here on M365.

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FM, I'm your host, Mirko Peters.

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Today's topic is one that almost everyone building in Azure has heard of,

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but few people actually understand in plain English as your virtual one.

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So here's the thing.

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If you've ever tried to build a global network in Azure, the traditional way, you know,

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it gets complicated fast, really fast.

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You start with one region and a few virtual networks and everything works fine,

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but then you add a second region, then a third, and suddenly you need to connect branch offices.

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Now you're managing pierings, root tables, firewall rules and VPN gateways across half a dozen

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locations.

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It's like building every road, every traffic light and every intersection yourself.

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And every time you add a new region, you have to build more roads.

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Azure virtual one handles the hard parts so you don't have to think of it as a highway system.

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Microsoft builds and manages the highway.

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You just build the on-ramps by the end of this episode.

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You'll understand how it works, why it exists and when you should use it.

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The old way, hub and spoke complexity.

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Let's start with the old way.

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Once you see the problem, the solution makes a lot more sense.

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The traditional approach in Azure is called hub and spoke.

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Imagine one central virtual network.

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That's your hub where you put shared services like firewalls, domain controllers and VPN

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gateways, then you connect your application virtual networks, the spokes to that hub using

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vNet peering.

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So traffic flows from the spokes through the hub where you can inspect and control it.

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When does this work?

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Well, in a single region with a handful of virtual networks, you have total control over routing

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and security.

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You know exactly where every packet is going and it's simple, clean and works.

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But here's where it breaks.

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The moment you add a second region, things get messy.

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You need to peer your hubs together, set up user-defined routes, UDRs to force traffic

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through firewalls and configure root tables for every single spoke.

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And every time you add a new region, you multiply that complexity.

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Let me give you a real example.

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Imagine a company with branches in three regions, North America, Europe and Asia,

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that needs connectivity between all of them.

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In a traditional hub and spoke setup, that means at least 12 peering.

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Each hub needs to peer with every other hub and each spoke needs root tables pointing to the

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right firewall.

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And when they add a new region, they have to update every single root table by hand.

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That's the nightmare of managing global networking the old way.

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It's not that it doesn't work.

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It's that it doesn't scale the more you add, the more you have to manage.

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And eventually the complexity becomes a full time job for a team of network engineers.

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This is why Microsoft built Azure virtual one.

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It solves the scaling problem without sacrificing controls.

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So what exactly is it?

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Let's break it down.

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What Azure virtual one actually is what exactly is Azure virtual one?

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Here's the simplest definition.

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It's a managed networking service that connects your branches, users and

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cloud resources through a single Microsoft manage backbone.

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Instead of building and managing all the connections yourself, Microsoft handles the heavy

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lifting.

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Think of it like a highway system.

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You don't build or maintain the highway.

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You just build the on ramps.

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Your on ramps are the connections from your branch offices, your remote users and your

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virtual networks.

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The highway itself, the routing, the interconnections between regions, the backbone,

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that's all managed by Microsoft.

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So what are the actual components?

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Let's break it down into the four main pieces.

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First, the virtual one resource itself.

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That's the overall network container, the name for your entire highway system.

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Second, virtual hubs, the regional connection points, one per Azure region.

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Each hub is like a highway interchange.

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Third, spoke virtual networks, your applications connected to those hubs and

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fourth, gateways, these handle VPN connections from your branches and express

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root connections from your data centers.

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Now, there are two tiers of virtual one.

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Basic gives you site to site VPN only.

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It's simple, but limited.

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Standard gives you the full set of features.

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Express route, point to site VPN for remote users, inter hub routing, as your firewall

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integration and more for almost any real world scenario.

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You want standard.

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The big difference from traditional hub and spoke is this.

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Microsoft manages the routing between hubs automatically.

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You don't have to create hearings or configure root tables.

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You connect your spokes to the hub and the hub handles the rest.

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It's that simple.

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The heart of virtual one is the virtual hub.

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Let's look at that next.

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The virtual hub, your on ramp to the global network.

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So what actually is a virtual hub?

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Here's the simplest way to think about it.

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It's a Microsoft managed regional router that lives inside a specific Azure

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region.

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That's it.

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A router that Microsoft sets up and maintains for you so you don't have to

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worry about the routing back end.

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Each hub is a connection point for four things.

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Virtual networks, your spoke applications, branch offices, connected through

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VPN or express route, remote users connecting through point to site VPN and

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other hubs, hubs in different regions, talking to each other.

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Here's the part that matters.

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The hub handles all the routing between these connections automatically.

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No manual root tables, no user defined roots, no peering configurations.

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You connect something to the hub and the hub figures out how to get traffic

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where it needs to go.

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Now you do need to plan your address spaces.

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Each hub needs its own IP range, just like any other network component.

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When you connect a spoke vnet to the hub, it's a simple vnet connection.

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A few clicks and you're done.

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The hub learns the vnet's address space automatically.

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But here's where the highway analogy really clicks.

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You can have multiple hubs in different regions and they automatically connect

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to each other.

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So a hub in North America talks to a hub in Europe, which talks to a hub in Asia,

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all through the Microsoft global backbone.

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Each hub is like an on ramp to that backbone.

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You build the on ramp for your region and Microsoft handles the highway

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between them and the scale is impressive.

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A single hub can handle up to 1000 site to site VPN connections up to 100,000 remote users

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and up to 50 gigabits per second of throughput through the hub root.

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That's not small office scale.

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That's that's enterprise scale.

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Now that we have hubs, let's connect everything to them.

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Connecting branches, users and cloud resources.

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So let's start with branch offices side to side VPN connects your physical

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locations to Azure using standard IP sec VPN tunnels.

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It works with pretty much any VPN device Cisco,

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fortunate, whatever you're using, no special hardware needed.

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Here's how it works.

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You create a VPN site in the hub, provide your branches, public IP address and

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address space and Azure handles the rest.

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It creates the tunnel manages the encryption keeps it running.

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Remote users are next point to side VPN.

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Let's employees connect from anywhere home, coffee shop hotel.

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They use the Azure VPN client, open VPN or standard, I gave you to and

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here's the key detail.

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It supports Microsoft, enter ID for authentication.

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So users log in with their work credentials, same as they do for everything else.

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No separate VPN passwords, no certificates to manage.

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When a user connects, they dial into the nearest hub and they automatically

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get access to every resource connected to that hub.

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VNets, branch networks, other regions, no split tunnel complexity, no manual

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routing. They connect once and they're on the network for your main offices and

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data centers. There's express route.

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This is a private dedicated connection from your on premises location to

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Azure. It bypasses the public internet entirely.

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Your traffic never touches a public network and virtual ones supports both VPN and

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express route on the same hub with automatic failover between them.

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If your express route circuit goes down traffic shifts to VPN without manual

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intervention. Now your cloud applications connecting spoke vnets to the hub takes

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just a few clicks.

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You select the hub, select the vnet and the connection is established.

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The hub learns the vnet's address space automatically.

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No peering setup, no root table configuration.

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And between regions, hubs talk to each other automatically over the Microsoft

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backbone. You don't configure inter hub connections.

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You don't manage transit routing. It just works.

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The result is any to any connectivity, any branch, any remote user, any vnet,

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any on premises site, they can all reach each other with traffic staying on

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Microsoft's private network the entire time.

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Let me give you a real world example.

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Imagine a retailer with stores in Europe, Asia and North America.

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Each store connects via site to site VPN to its regional hub.

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The European stores connect to the European hub.

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The Asian stores connect to the Asian hub.

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And when traffic needs to go between regions, say an Asian store needs to

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check inventory in the North American warehouse that traffic travels over the

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Microsoft backbone, not the public internet, not a third party MPLS network,

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Microsoft's private network, but connectivity is only half the story.

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The real power is how virtual one handles routing and security, routing and

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security built in, but connectivity is only half the story.

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The real power of virtual one is how it handles routing and security.

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In a traditional hub and spoke setup, if you want to force traffic through a

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firewall, you have to create user defined routes, UDRs for every single subnet in

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every single spoke.

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And if you have multiple regions, you do it all over again.

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It's complex.

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It's error prone.

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And when something breaks, good luck figuring out which root table has the wrong

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entry.

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Virtual one solves this with something called routing intent.

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Think of it as a single configuration that tells the hub, send all traffic

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through the firewall.

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That's it.

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One setting, not hundreds of root tables.

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And here's what it covers, internet traffic, anything going out to the

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web, private traffic, vnet to vnet branch to branch branch to vnet and

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inter hub traffic, traffic moving between regions, one policy, global

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enforcement, you set it once and it applies everywhere.

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Now, how does the firewall actually get into the picture through secured

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virtual hubs?

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You deploy Azure Firewall directly into the hub or a third party NGFW

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like fortinet, checkpoint or palo alto.

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The firewall sits in the traffic path transparently.

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No UDRs needed, no complex routing traffic flows in gets inspected and

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flows out.

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It just works for encryption.

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All VPN tunnels use standard IPSAC IK.

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Microsoft recommends GCMAs 256 for the best balance of performance and security.

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And if you're using express route, you can encrypt that traffic too.

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So even your private connection is protected.

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This aligns with zero trust principles, no direct internet access from

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spokes, all traffic inspected, microsegmentation inside spoke vnet's and

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everything managed centrally through Azure firewall manager.

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One policy applied across all hubs globally.

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The security advantage is simple.

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Instead of managing firewall rules per region, you manage one policy that

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applies everywhere.

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Instead of troubleshooting root tables, you configure rooting intent once.

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Instead of hoping nothing breaks when you add a new region, you know the policy

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follows automatically.

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So when should you use virtual one versus the traditional hub and spoke model?

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VWN versus traditional hub and spoke when to use what?

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Let's get one thing straight.

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Hub and spoke isn't broken.

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It's just the right tool for the right job.

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So when does hub and spoke win when you're in a single region?

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When you've got a handful of virtual networks, maybe five, maybe 10, you

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want total control over every root, every firewall rule.

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You've got a small team that knows this network inside and out.

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In that case, hub and spoke is simpler and cheaper.

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You don't need the overhead of a managed service.

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Virtual one wins when you're in multiple regions.

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When you've got branch offices everywhere when remote users need to connect

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from anywhere when your network spans the globe and you want to stop managing

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it piece by piece.

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The more distributed your network gets, the more virtual one makes sense.

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Let's talk numbers at small scale say 10 v nets.

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Hub and spoke is cheaper.

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You're just paying for pierings and basic gateways, but a 200 v nets virtual one is

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about 21% cheaper.

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Why?

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Because you're not paying your team to manage hundreds of pierings and root tables.

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Those operational savings add up fast and performance in global deployments.

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Virtual one gives 15 to 25% lower latency.

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That's because Microsoft's backbone routing is optimized for global traffic.

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Your packets take the best path, not the path you manually configured three years

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ago.

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The management difference is even bigger.

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With hub and spoke, you manage pierings, root tables, gateways and firewalls per region.

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Each region becomes its own project.

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With virtual one, it's a single pane of glass.

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One view, one set of policies, one way to manage everything.

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So how do you decide?

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Ask yourself one question, am I building for today or for three years from now?

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If you're a startup with one region and five v nets, hub and spoke is fine.

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But if you're planning to expand virtual one grows with you.

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And here's the good news.

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You can start with hub and spoke in migrate later.

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Microsoft supports that migration path.

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You don't have to get it perfect on day one.

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If you ever get asked this in an interview, here's the short answer.

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Hub and spoke for controlled single region deployments.

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Virtual one for large scale global connectivity.

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That one sentence shows you understand the trade off.

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Let's look at a few real world scenarios to see how this plays out.

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Real world scenarios and migration paths.

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Let's make this concrete with three real world scenarios.

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Sonario one, a global retail chain, 50 stores across three continents,

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remote workers doing inventory, customer service and management,

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a centralized ERP system running in Azure.

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Here's how virtual one makes this work.

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Deploy hubs in North America, Europe and Asia, one per continent.

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Each store connects via site to site VPN to its regional hub.

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A store in London connects to the European hub, a store in Tokyo connects to the Asian hub.

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Remote workers use point aside VPN, authenticated through Microsoft,

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enter ID, their work credentials, nothing extra.

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Now, here's the key.

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All traffic between stores and Azure stays on the Microsoft backbone.

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That London store checking inventory in the North American warehouse that traffic

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never touches the public internet.

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It goes from the European hub across Microsoft's private network to the North American hub

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and into the ERP system.

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The result, consistent connectivity everywhere, centralized security through the hubs,

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and lower cost and MPLS, no carrier contracts, no long term commitments,

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just pay for what you use.

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Sonario two, MPLS replacement.

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This is a big one.

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Many companies have been paying carriers for MPLS circuits for years.

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Expensive, rigid, hard to change.

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Virtual one gives you a path out.

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Start by using virtual one for new branches and Azure connectivity.

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Any new location you open goes straight onto the virtual one backbone.

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Then gradually migrate existing MPLS sites to VPN or express route.

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Use express route for your legacy data centers that need private connectivity.

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Over time, reduce your MPLS circuits as traffic shifts to the virtual one backbone.

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You don't have to cut everything over at once.

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You can run both in parallel as each MPLS contract comes up for renewal.

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You decide does the site move to virtual one?

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Most of the time, the answer is yes.

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Sonario three, a cloud first start up.

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You're in one region today, one hub, a handful of vnet's, a small team,

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but you're planning to expand.

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You've got customers in Europe and Asia, your hiring remote workers globally,

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deploy one hub in your current region, connect your vnet's set up point to side VPN

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for your remote team.

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That's your starting point as you expand in your regions.

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You add hubs.

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The routing is automatic.

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You don't reconfigure anything.

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Your remote uses connect to the nearest hub without any changes on their end.

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You're ready for scale without a redesign.

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That's the beauty of virtual one.

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It grows with you.

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So how do you actually get started?

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Getting started with Azure virtual one.

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So how do you actually start?

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Create a virtual one resource in the Azure portal, pick standard tier.

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That's where the full feature set lives.

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Now deploy a virtual hub in the region closest to your users or workloads.

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Set up the basics, the hubs address space and the VPN gateway scale units.

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That's your first on ramp ready to go.

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Connect your first spoke vnet.

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It's a simple vnet connection.

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A few clicks, no peering, no root tables.

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The hub learns the address space automatically.

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Then add branch connectivity, create VPN sites for your offices and download the VPN configuration your branch devices need.

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For remote users, configure point to site VPN with certificate or enter ID authentication.

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Starts more, prove the concept with one hub, one vnet, one branch, then expand to additional regions when you're ready.

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For more detail, check Microsoft learn in the Azure architecture center.

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They've got step by step guides and reference architectures.

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So that's Azure virtual one, the highway system for your global network.

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Microsoft handles the routing and infrastructure.

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You handle the on ramps and the policies.

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Start with a single hub, connect your first vnet and see the difference it makes.

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