How to check if Outbound access for VMs in Azure is enabled

Question

Received an email from Microsoft indicating that Default outbound access for VMs in Azure will be retired on 30 September 2025. How can I check if the VMs are using default outbound access?

Answer 1

Hi Azure Admin,

Due to retirement of default outbound access, you can transition to one of these explicit outbound connectivity methods for virtual machines are:

• Create within a subnet associated to a NAT gateway.
• Deploy in the backend pool of a standard load balancer with outbound rules defined.
• Deploy in the backend pool of a basic public load balancer.
• Virtual machines with public IP addresses explicitly associated to them.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-network/ip-services/default-outbound-access

To identify the Azure resources using default outbound Internet access:

You can leverage using Azure Advisor Operational Excellence recommendation (“Add explicit outbound method to disable default outbound”) that helps you pinpoint network interfaces that might be in this situation.

Please follow below documentation for more information https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/coreinfrastructureandsecurityblog/how-to-identify-azure-resources-using-default-outbound-internet-access/4400755

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