What is Azure Virtual Network encryption?

Azure Virtual Network encryption is a feature of Azure Virtual Networks. Virtual network encryption allows you to seamlessly encrypt and decrypt traffic between Azure Virtual Machines by creating a DTLS tunnel.

Virtual network encryption enables you to encrypt traffic between Virtual Machines and Virtual Machines Scale Sets within the same virtual network. Virtual network encryption encrypts traffic between regionally and globally peered virtual networks. For more information about virtual network peering, see Virtual network peering.

Virtual network encryption enhances existing encryption in transit capabilities in Azure. For more information about encryption in Azure, see Azure encryption overview.

Requirements

Virtual network encryption has the following requirements:

• Virtual Network encryption is supported on general-purpose and memory optimized virtual machine instance sizes including:

  Type	VM Series	VM SKU
  General purpose workloads	D-series V4 D-series V5	Dv4 and Dsv4-series Ddv4 and Ddsv4-series Dav4 and Dasv4-series Dv5 and Dsv5-series Ddv5 and Ddsv5-series Dlsv5 and Dldsv5-series Dasv5 and Dadsv5-series
  General purpose and memory intensive workloads	E-series V4 E-series V5	Ev4 and Esv4-series Edv4 and Edsv4-series Eav4 and Easv4-series Ev5 and Esv5-series Edv5 and Edsv5-series Easv5 and Eadsv5-series
  Storage intensive workloads	LSv3	LSv3-series
  Memory intensive workloads	M-series	Mv2-series Msv2 and Mdsv2-series Medium Memory Msv3 and Mdsv3 Medium Memory Series

• Accelerated Networking must be enabled on the network interface of the virtual machine. For more information about Accelerated Networking, see  What is Accelerated Networking?.

• Encryption is only applied to traffic between virtual machines in a virtual network. Traffic is encrypted from a private IP address to a private IP address.

• Traffic to unsupported Virtual Machines is unencrypted. Use Virtual Network Flow Logs to confirm flow encryption between virtual machines. For more information, see Virtual network flow logs.

• The start/stop of existing virtual machines is required after enabling encryption in a virtual network.

Availability

Azure Virtual Network encryption is generally available in all Azure public regions.

Limitations

Azure Virtual Network encryption has the following limitations:

• In scenarios where a PaaS is involved, the virtual machine where the PaaS is hosted dictates if virtual network encryption is supported. The virtual machine must meet the listed requirements.

• For Internal load balancer, all virtual machines behind the load balancer must be a supported virtual machine SKU.

• AllowUnencrypted is the only supported enforcement at general availability. DropUnencrypted enforcement will be supported in the future.

• Virtual networks with encryption enabled don't support Azure DNS Private Resolver.

Supported scenarios

Virtual network encryption is supported in the following scenarios:

Scenario	Support
VMs in the same virtual network (including virtual machine scale sets and their internal load balancer)	Supported on traffic between VMs from these SKUs.
Virtual network peering	Supported on traffic between VMs across regional peering.
Global virtual network peering	Supported on traffic between VMs across global peering.
Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)	- Supported on AKS using Azure CNI (regular or overlay mode), Kubenet, or BYOCNI: node and pod traffic is encrypted. - Partially supported on AKS using Azure CNI Dynamic Pod IP Assignment (podSubnetId specified): node traffic is encrypted, but pod traffic isn't encrypted. - Traffic to the AKS managed control plane egresses from the virtual network and thus isn't in scope for virtual network encryption. However, this traffic is always encrypted via TLS.

Note

Other services that currently don't support virtual network encryption are included in our future roadmap.

Related content

• Create a virtual network with encryption using the Azure portal.
• Virtual network encryption frequently asked questions (FAQ).
• What is Azure Virtual Network?