{"id":21613,"date":"2019-09-09T09:00:19","date_gmt":"2019-09-09T08:00:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/?p=21613"},"modified":"2019-09-06T16:19:45","modified_gmt":"2019-09-06T15:19:45","slug":"creating-an-azure-service-for-slow-moving-organisations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/?p=21613","title":{"rendered":"Creating an Azure Service for Slow Moving Organisations"},"content":{"rendered":"

In this post, I will explain how you can use Azure\u2019s Public IP Prefix feature to pre-create public IP addresses to access Azure services when you are working big\/government organisations that can take weeks to configure a VPN tunnel, outbound firewall rule, and so on.<\/p>\n

In this scenario, I need a predictable IP address so that means I must use the Standard SKU address tier.<\/p>\n

The Problem<\/h2>\n

It normally only takes a few minutes to create a firewall rule, a VPN tunnel, etc in an on-premises network. But sometimes it seems to take forever! I\u2019ve been in that situation \u2013 you\u2019ve set up an environment for the customer to work with, but their on-premises networking team(s) are slow to do anything. And you only wish that you had given them all the details that they needed earlier in the project so their configuration work would end when your weeks of engineering was wrapping up.<\/p>\n

But you won\u2019t know the public IP address until you create it. And that is normally only created when you create the virtual network gateway, Azure Firewall, Application Firewall, etc. But what if you had a pool of Azure public IP addresses that were pre-reserved and ready to share with the network team. Maybe they could be used to make early requests for VPN tunnels, firewall rules, and so on? Luckily, we can do that!<\/p>\n

Public IP Prefix<\/h2>\n

An Azure Public IP Prefix is a set of reserved public IP addresses (PIPs). You can create an IP Prefix of a certain size, from \/31 (2 addresses) to \/24 (256 addresses), in a certain region. The pool of addresses is a contiguous block of predictable addresses. And from that pool, you can create public IP addresses for your Azure resources.<\/p>\n

In my example, I want a Standard tier IP address and this requires a Standard tier Public IP Prefix. Unfortunately, the Azure Portal doesn\u2019t allow for this with Public IP Prefix, so we need some PowerShell. First, we\u2019ll define some reused variables:<\/p>\n

$rgName = \"test\"\r\n$region = \"westeurope\"\r\n$ipPrefixName = \"test-ipfx\"<\/pre>\n
Now we will create the Publix IP Prefix. Note that the length refers to the subnet mask length. In my example that\u2019s a \/30 resulting in a prefix with 4 reserved public IP addresses:<\/p>\n
$ipPrefix = New-AzPublicIpPrefix -Name $ipPrefixName -ResourceGroupName $rgName -PrefixLength 30 -Sku Standard -Location $region<\/pre>\n
You\u2019ll note above that I used Standard in the command. This creates a pool of static Standard tier public IP addresses. I could have dropped the Standard, and that would have created a pool of static Basic tier IP addresses \u2013 you can use the Azure Portal to deploy Basic tier Public IP Prefix and public IP addresses from that prefix. The decision to use Standard tier or Basic tier affects what resources I can deploy with the addresses:<\/p>\n