Service Endpoint vs Private Endpoint

Question

Hello Team

I understand the difference between a Service endpoint and a private endpoint but what i am not able to understand is in which scenario someone will go for the Service endpoint knowing that the private endpoint brings more security and it does not expose any public IPs and i can access the service from Azure or on-prem over private IPs. So why to use a service endpoint .. what is the benefit. Please let me know .. i have gone through a lot of articles but no one talks about an advantage of using a service endpoint .. are we just saying private endpoint is upscale over a service endpoint and using private endpoint is recommended .. then why even service endpoint is there/

Answer 1

in this link, you can find a simple explanation for the difference

https://sameeraman.wordpress.com/2019/10/30/azure-private-link-vs-azure-service-endpoints/

if you need more info please indicate so I can provide you with more sources and examples

Answer 2

@Jatinder Kumar

Welcome to the Microsoft Q&A Platform. Thank you for reaching out & I hope you are doing well.

I understand that you would like to know the advantages/use cases/scenarios where Service EndPoint will dominate the Private EndPoint.

The main advantage I can think of is management overhead and Pricing

• With Private EndPoint, you have to make sure the resources are able to access the Private EndPoint NIC's IP.
  • In a scenario where you create multiple Private endPoints, this needs to be properly managed and handled.
  • But with service EndPoint, direct Internet access is enough (less management)
• Usage of NSGs in both PE subnet and the source VM(s) subnets
  • This is not required by Service EndPoint.
• Consider a scenario where PaaS service is managed by a different entity such as a different organization/company
  • Here, having a Private EndPoint would mean that the VNet Owner has full control over who can access the PE and in turn access the PaaS service
  • However, having a SE means that the PaaS service owner has control over who can access the PaaS service.
• DNS related management - With Private EndPoints, Private DNS Zones come into picture and require proper configuration.
• Small and Medium business who only have their architecture in Cloud and very few workloads.
  • Majority of the PaaS services come with their own inbuilt firewall
  • Using this, they can block internet IPs
  • And using service endPoints to allow only the VNets and Subnets from their subscription.
• Also, one must be aware of Service endpoint policy
  • This can be used to further fine-tune who can access the PaaS service

I believe I was able to highlight some use cases.

Azure offers a wide range of Products and an even wider range of Services and mechanisms to access them, and one such thing happens to be Service EndPoint.

Should you have a specific scenario or requirement and would like to consider PE vs SE, please do let me know and I shall share my opinions on the best way forward.

Thanks,

Kapil

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