While modern companies may use a pure cloud approach, there are still companies which still have their own datacenter. Thus connecting your on-premiss network to the cloud is essential. In this post, I will have a look on how this works and what is required, focusing on Azure, as this is what we currently use at my employer.

In my previous post “Microsoft Azure Fundamentals” I briefly touched the topic, today I would like to go a bit more into details, as Azure offers different ways to connect an on-premises network. There are 3 basic approaches:

• VPN Gateway is the simplest way to extend an on-premises network.
• Azure ExpressRoute allows you to connect your datacenter via a private connection, rather going over the public internet as it is the case for VPN.
• Azure Stack is an extension to add Azure services and capabilities to your environment

Under my docs section Microsoft Azure: Connect an on-premises network to Azure I summarized the details of each way.

AS these are just basic considerations and if you are interested in more specifics, I recommend to follow-up here:

• Connect an on-premises network to Azure
• Hybrid app design considerations
• Hybrid solution patterns and examples for Azure and Azure Stack
• Browse Azure Architecture