Windows Azure virtual networking: Now easier and cheaper to use

Windows has made some updates to the Azure Virtual Network, now in production status, that makes it easier to extend your own network or private cloud into Azure.

Last year, I wrote about Azure virtual networking and explained how this technology extends your corporate network or private cloud into Windows Azure, what I called Bring Your Own Network (BYON). In the last fifteen months, Microsoft has moved the original preview service into production status, charging a base rate of a little over one dollar per day for the site-to-site virtual private network (VPN).

New features that make Azure VPNs easier and cheaper to use have also been released. You can now deploy the on-premise Azure VPN endpoint on a Windows Server 2012 computer or virtual machine (VM)—previously, only specific hardware endpoints were supported. Also a new Point to Site VPN mode keeps individual computers outside Windows Azure, including roaming workers connected to the corporate Azure Virtual Network as well.

Windows RRAS as an Azure gateway

A barrier to using Azure Virtual Network in the first preview release was that Microsoft required your VPN endpoint to be a hardware device (of a router or firewall type) from Cisco or Juniper.  If you were not already invested in those hardware vendors at the network edge, it precluded you from participating in the Azure Virtual Network preview without purchasing new hardware