To enable IP-level network connectivity between Azure services and external resources, Windows Azure Connect can be used. The underlying connectivity model that supports this is quite flexible. For example, you can use Windows Azure Connect to setup networking between arbitrary groups of machines that are distributed across the internet in a very controlled and secure manner.

The following diagram illustrates the key elements of the Windows Azure Connect model.

Windows Azure Connect creates a logical “virtual network” which can contain two types of entities: Azure Role groups and Machine groups.

Role groups map to Azure roles, which have been enabled for Windows Azure Connect. Only the Azure VM instances for a role are members of a role group – the admin cannot manually add or remove members. Windows Azure Connect automatically manages the membership of role groups – if you add or remove role instances, Windows Azure Connect will track this and update the role group membership appropriately.
Machine groups are admin-defined collections of external machines, which have been enabled for Windows Azure Connect through installation of the Windows Azure Connect Endpoint Software. An external machine can belong to at most one machine group.

Connectivity within the Windows Azure Connect virtual network is based on the following rules:

A role group can be “linked” to a machine group – this enables connectivity between the members of those groups. A role group can be linked to multiple machine groups – e.g. you could have an Azure web role that is connected to your “My Servers” and “My Laptops” machine groups as shown in the diagram above.
Members of a role group (the Azure VM instances) do not have connectivity with each other. In addition, a role group cannot be linked to another role group. These limitations are intentional – the Azure service model controls connectivity between roles and the Azure runtime supports connectivity between role instances. We did not want the Windows Azure Connect model to interfere with this behavior.
Machine groups can be linked, as mentioned above, to role groups. Machine groups can also be linked to other machine groups to enable connectivity between members of those groups.
Links are not transitive from a connectivity perspective. For example, suppose Group A is linked to Group B, and Group B is linked to Group C. Machines in Group A can communicate with those in Group B, and machines in Group B can communicate with those in Group C. However, machines in Group A cannot communicate with those in Group C.
A machine group has an “interconnected” property – if it is set to true, then all members of that group can communicate with each other. If it is set to false, then communication between the members is not allowed.
It is important to note that Windows Azure Connect does not affect or interfere with a machine’s existing network connectivity.

Objectives

In this hands-on lab, you will learn how to:

Provision a Windows Azure Connect service and associate it with your Azure subscription.
Setup network connectivity between Azure Roles and external machines.

Prerequisites

The following is required to complete this hands-on Lab:

Setup

In order to execute the exercises in this hands-on lab you need to set up your environment.

Open a Windows Explorer window and browse to the lab’s Source folder.
Double-click the Setup.cmd file in this folder to launch the setup process that will configure your environment.
If the User Account Control dialog is shown, confirm the action to proceed.

Note:
Make sure you have checked all the dependencies for this lab before running the setup.

Exercises

This hands-on lab includes the following exercise:

Connecting an Azure Web Role to an External SQL Server Database with Windows Azure Connect

Estimated time to complete this lab: 60 minutes.

Note:
When you first start Visual Studio, you must select one of the predefined settings collections. Every predefined collection is designed to match a particular development style and determines window layouts, editor behavior, IntelliSense code snippets, and dialog box options. The procedures in this lab describe the actions necessary to accomplish a given task in Visual Studio when using the General Development Settings collection. If you choose a different settings collection for your development environment, there may be differences in these procedures that you need to take into account.

Note:

When you first start Visual Studio, you must select one of the predefined settings collections. Every predefined collection is designed to match a particular development style and determines window layouts, editor behavior, IntelliSense code snippets, and dialog box options. The procedures in this lab describe the actions necessary to accomplish a given task in Visual Studio when using the General Development Settings collection. If you choose a different settings collection for your development environment, there may be differences in these procedures that you need to take into account.