When it comes to connectivity, scalability, and security, organizations often face an important decision: opt for a traditional network architecture or for Microsoft Azure's Virtual WAN. But which one is the best fit for your company? We are happy to help you make the right choice. Let's take a look together at the advantages and potential issues of the Virtual WAN model.
Wed, 17 April 2024
Virtual WAN is an Azure network service, managed by Microsoft, that offers you optimal and automated connectivity on a global scale. However, when this hub-and-spoke architecture first hit the market in 2019, it was still missing many important network features. And it had quite a few limitations, which meant it couldn't meet the needs of the general public: "to provide a unified framework for networking, cybersecurity, and routing".
But in the past 5 years, Microsoft has worked very hard to improve this service. They have added
But why exactly? Let's go over the main advantages together. And look at how we can tackle potential challenges.
Before we delve into the pros and cons, it might be useful to first examine the various services and components of Azure Virtual WAN. And to discover how they provide high-speed connections with the Azure backbone:
Complete mesh hubs through which all traffic flows. Upon creation, you get an address space and various routing tables.
These connections ensure interregional connectivity between all on-prem and Azure network endpoints.
This component supports custom routing tables for virtual networks. And functions as a default table for branches (P2S, S2S, ER). Additionally, it also connects to routing tables. And distributes routes from connections to tables.
There are different types of connections:
This provides additional security, thanks to the integration of the Azure Firewall Manager. With it, you can:
When you combine these services and features, you can expand your network architecture. You ensure secure transit connectivity paths between multiple spokes, branches, and regions.
There are 2 variants of Azure Virtual WAN: basic and standard. At Arxus, we only implement the standard version because the basic variant only supports S2S VPN connections.
An Azure Virtual WAN architecture has quite a few advantages:
Although Azure Virtual WAN offers many advantages, there are also some potential disadvantages to consider:
Our engineers have recently encountered a problem: the West European Azure region, located in Amsterdam, is currently facing capacity limitations. And Virtual WAN is one of the services that is suffering the most from this. The latest Azure network projects have indeed experienced initial deployment failures. As a result, Microsoft was forced to allocate additional capacity to ensure the implementation could proceed successfully.
But as soon as the new data centers in the Netherlands are ready, this issue will have a much smaller impact. And certainly when the
At Arxus, we're eager to help you maximize your cloud solutions. In our opinion, Azure Virtual WAN offers more advantages than a traditional hub-and-spoke architecture. We're happy to think along with you!
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