You’ve probably heard of Microsoft Azure infrastructure as a service (IaaS), and you might even use it. However, you might not always think of Microsoft as an ISP. Many of their services are designed to “just work,” and it’s easy to enable internet access without requiring extensive network configuration. Still, Microsoft operates a massive global network that customers can use to make their services reachable across the world.
As a networking partner of Microsoft, Citrix SD-WAN enables high performance connectivity over the Azure global network. In fact, Citrix was the first to integrate with Microsoft’s Azure Virtual WAN offering. As a result, our customers can seamlessly allow their users in branches, home offices, to communicate over Microsoft’s high-speed global network to resources, sites and data centers in other regions.
Citrix SD-WAN product manager Anudeep Athlur recently published a Deployment Guide on Citrix SD-WAN with Azure Virtual WAN. In this blog post, we’ll look briefly at the advantages offered by Azure Virtual WAN and the benefits of a joint Azure Virtual WAN and Citrix SD-WAN solution. I’ll also share five things you need to know about the integration of Azure Virtual WAN and Citrix SD-WAN.
Citrix SD-WAN connects you to the Azure Virtual WAN “Superhighway”
Think about endpoints accessing apps online over packet-switched networks like cars traveling on highways. Here, Microsoft Azure Virtual WAN would be a “superhighway,” and the packets would be the high-performance vehicles driving over it. Like with a networks of roads, Microsoft Azure Virtual WAN offers a variety of routes to global destinations, and Citrix reliably brings users to these routes.
The Benefits of Azure Virtual WAN and Citrix SD-WAN
Citrix SD-WAN provides a secure and reliable WAN edge solution that augments Azure Virtual WAN by providing a high level of redundancy, automation, monitoring, and control on a global scale:
- Scale connectivity for hundreds or thousands of branches or home offices, all provisioned centrally
- Reduce costs by eliminating MPLS networks or expensive dedicated links by connecting local internet to nearby PoPs on Microsoft’s far-reaching global network;
- Increase resiliency using Citrix SD-WAN’s per packet monitoring to steer traffic over the best performing Azure Virtual WAN access link;
- Improve performance by bridging connectivity to a Citrix SD-WAN virtual instance at the Azure Virtual WAN hub to add QOS, load balancing, and VoIP packet replication to the edge of the Microsoft network
- Centrally manage and monitor global network health and usage with Citrix SD-WAN Orchestrator
Getting Your Microsoft Azure Virtual WAN Ready
You’ll be ready to provision Citrix SD-WAN instances centrally from cloud-hosted Citrix Orchestrator after following these five steps to set up your Microsoft Azure Virtual WAN:
- Create Resource Groups, a logical grouping of Azure objects used in the solution, for each desired geographic region
- Create VNets, a fundamental building block for Azure networking, for each geographic region
- Create an Azure Virtual WAN resource, a service that brings together Azure networking, security, and routing objects and functionality
- Create Azure Virtual WAN hubs, a logical point for SD-WAN to connect customer sites within a region
- Peer VNets, a logical connection between VNets across regions
Prepare to Configure your Citrix SD-WAN Environment
Now you’ll need to gather some detail from the Azure Virtual WAN environment to prepare to configure the Citrix SD-WAN environment:
- Provision SD-WAN instances in Azure: Deploy primary and secondary MCNs that act as controllers in the SD-WAN network to manage the overlay network for traffic routing
- Record the Azure SD-WAN instance serial number: Gather the serial number from the Azure console for use in Citrix SD-WAN Orchestrator for zero-touch deployment of the SD-WAN instance
- Record the LAN and WAN Interface IPs of VPXs from Azure: These IPs, dynamically provisioned by Azure, are used to configure the instance in Citrix SD-WAN Orchestrator
- Record the MCNs public IP addresses: These IP addresses, configured through Citrix SD-WAN Orchestrator, are used by the SD-WAN instances to connect to each other and establish the overlay network
- Create an Azure Service Principal: This establishes an IAM role, with secure credentials, to configure in Citrix SD-WAN Orchestrator, allowing it to manage and monitor the Azure Virtual WAN integration
Deploy your Configuration with Citrix Orchestrator
After completing the prerequisites, configure Azure Virtual WAN as a Citrix SD-WAN delivery service in Citrix SD-WAN Orchestrator to bring them together. Then, after deploying the configuration to all instances with Citrix SD-WAN Orchestrator, verify site tunnels and BGP peer states to confirm the successful integration of Azure Virtual WAN and Citrix SD-WAN.
Learn More
Sending your users over the general internet using an average ISP may leave them feeling like they’re stuck in traffic on a Friday afternoon. Deliver a great user experience by connecting them to their services with Citrix SD-WAN and Microsoft Azure Virtual WAN. Learn more about the benefits of Citrix SD-WAN for Azure VWAN and deployment considerations.
Check out my last post, on five things you should know about zero trust security, and look for future posts on Citrix SD-WAN, Citrix Secure Internet Access, and more.
