Choose Between VPN Peering or VPN Gateway

Virtual Network Connection types

There are some possible ways to connect to Azure Virtual network.

• Virtual Network Peering
• VPN gateways
• Express Route

We have already discussed about Vnet Peering and VPN gateways but let’s have a small recap on this.

VNet Peering: It is used to connect two Azure Virtual Network. Once it is peered, Virtual networks appear as one for connectivity purpose. Traffic between VNets uses the Azure backbone network Infrastructure via private IP address only. VNet peering can also be done across Azure regions (global Peering).

VPN Gateway: A VPN Gateway is Virtual network gateway used to send the traffic between an Azure Virtual Network and on-premises network over public Internet. VPN Gateway can also be used to send traffic across VNets. Each Virtual network can have at most one VPN Gateway.

Gateway Transit:

VPN gateways and Virtual Network Peering can coexist via Gateway transit. As soon as your workload increases in Azure, you need to scale your network across regions and VNets keeps on growing.

With help of Gateway Transit, enabled on Virtual network Peering, you can create a transit virtual network that contains your VPN gateway, Network Virtual Appliance and other shared services. As your Workload VNets increases, you can connect these VNets via transit virtual network using peering.

Configuring Connections:

Virtual network Peering and VPN gateway both supports following connection:

• Virtual network in different regions.
• Virtual network in different Azure Active Directory tenants.
• Virtual network in different Azure Subscription.
• Virtual Network that uses a mix of Azure deployment Models (Resource manager and Classic)

comparison between Virtual Network Peering & VPN gateway