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Tutorial: Connect virtual networks with virtual network peering using the Azure portal

  • Article
  • 5 minutes to read

You can connect virtual networks to each other with virtual network peering. These virtual networks can be in the same region or different regions (also known as global virtual network peering). Once virtual networks are peered, resources in both virtual networks can communicate with each other over a low-latency, high-bandwidth connection using Microsoft backbone network.

In this tutorial, you learn how to:

  • Create virtual networks
  • Connect two virtual networks with a virtual network peering
  • Deploy a virtual machine (VM) into each virtual network
  • Communicate between VMs

This tutorial uses the Azure portal. You can also complete it using Azure CLI or PowerShell.

If you don't have an Azure subscription, create a free account before you begin.

Prerequisites

  • An Azure subscription

Sign in to Azure

Sign in to the Azure portal.

Create virtual networks

  1. On the Azure portal, select + Create a resource.

  2. Search for Virtual Network, and then select Create.

    Screenshot of create a resource for virtual network.

  3. On the Basics tab, enter or select the following information and accept the defaults for the remaining settings:

    Setting Value
    Subscription Select your subscription.
    Resource group Select Create new and enter myResourceGroup.
    Name Enter myVirtualNetwork1.
    Region Select East US.

    Screenshot of create virtual network basics tab.

  4. On the IP Addresses tab, enter 10.0.0.0/16 for the IPv4 address Space field. Select the + Add subnet button below and enter Subnet1 for Subnet Name and 10.0.0.0/24 for the Subnet Address range.

    Screenshot of create a virtual network IP addresses tab.

  5. Select Review + create and then select Create.

  6. Repeat steps 1-5 again to create a second virtual network with the following settings:

    Setting Value
    Name myVirtualNetwork2
    Address space 10.1.0.0/16
    Resource group myResourceGroup
    Subnet name Subnet2
    Subnet address range 10.1.0.0/24

Peer virtual networks

  1. In the search box at the top of the Azure portal, look for myVirtualNetwork1. When myVirtualNetwork1 appears in the search results, select it.

    Screenshot of searching for myVirtualNetwork1.

  2. Under Settings, select Peerings, and then select + Add, as shown in the following picture:

    Screenshot of creating peerings for myVirtualNetwork1.

  3. Enter or select the following information, accept the defaults for the remaining settings, and then select Add.

    Setting Value
    This virtual network
    Peering link name Enter myVirtualNetwork1-myVirtualNetwork2 for the name of the peering from myVirtualNetwork1 to the remote virtual network.
    Remote virtual network
    Peering link name Enter myVirtualNetwork2-myVirtualNetwork1 for the name of the peering from the remote virtual network to myVirtualNetwork1.
    Subscription Select your subscription of the remote virtual network.
    Virtual network Select myVirtualNetwork2 for the name of the remote virtual network. The remote virtual network can be in the same region of myVirtualNetwork1 or in a different region.

    Screenshot of virtual network peering configuration.

    In the Peerings page, the Peering status is Connected, as shown in the following picture:

    Screenshot of virtual network peering connection status.

    If you don't see a Connected status, select the Refresh button.

Create virtual machines

Create a VM in each virtual network so that you can test the communication between them.

Create the first VM

  1. On the Azure portal, select + Create a resource.

  2. Select Compute, and then Create under Virtual machine.

    Screenshot of create a resource for virtual machines.

  3. Enter or select the following information on the Basics tab. Accept the defaults for the remaining settings, and then select Create:

    Setting Value
    Resource group Select myResourceGroup.
    Name Enter myVm1.
    Location Select (US) East US.
    Image Select an OS image. For this tutorial, Windows Server 2019 Datacenter - Gen2 is selected.
    Size Select a VM size. For this tutorial, Standard_D2s_v3 is selected.
    Username Enter a username. For this tutorial, the username azure is used.
    Password Enter a password of your choosing. The password must be at least 12 characters long and meet the defined complexity requirements.

    Screenshot of virtual machine basic tab configuration.

  4. On the Networking tab, select the following values:

    Setting Value
    Virtual network Select myVirtualNetwork1.
    Subnet Select Subnet1.
    NIC network security group Select Basic.
    Public inbound ports Select Allow selected ports.
    Select inbound ports Select RDP (3389).

    Screenshot of virtual machine networking tab configuration.

  5. Select the Review + Create and then Create to start the VM deployment.

Create the second VM

Repeat steps 1-5 again to create a second virtual machine with the following changes:

Setting Value
Name myVm2
Virtual network myVirtualNetwork2

The VMs take a few minutes to create. Don't continue with the remaining steps until both VMs are created.

Note

Azure provides a default outbound access IP for VMs that either aren't assigned a public IP address or are in the back-end pool of an internal basic Azure load balancer. The default outbound access IP mechanism provides an outbound IP address that isn't configurable.

The default outbound access IP is disabled when a public IP address is assigned to the VM, the VM is placed in the back-end pool of a standard load balancer, with or without outbound rules, or if an Azure Virtual Network NAT gateway resource is assigned to the subnet of the VM.

VMs that are created by virtual machine scale sets in flexible orchestration mode don't have default outbound access.

For more information about outbound connections in Azure, see Default outbound access in Azure and Use source network address translation (SNAT) for outbound connections.

Communicate between VMs

Test the communication between the two virtual machines over the virtual network peering by pinging from myVm2 to myVm1.

  1. In the search box at the top of the portal, look for myVm1. When myVm1 appears in the search results, select it.

    Screenshot of searching for myVm1.

  2. To connect to the virtual machine, select Connect and then select RDP from the drop-down. Select Download RDP file to download the remote desktop file.

    Screenshot of connect to virtual machine button.

  3. To connect to the VM, open the downloaded RDP file. If prompted, select Connect.

    Screenshot of connection screen for remote desktop.

  4. Enter the username and password you specified when creating myVm1 (you may need to select More choices, then Use a different account, to specify the credentials you entered when you created the VM), then select OK.

    Screenshot of R D P credential screen.

  5. You may receive a certificate warning during the sign-in process. Select Yes to continue with the connection.

  6. In a later step, ping is used to communicate with myVm1 from myVm2. Ping uses the Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP), which is denied through the Windows Firewall, by default. On myVm1, enable ICMP through the Windows firewall, so that you can ping this VM from myVm2 in a later step, using PowerShell:

    New-NetFirewallRule –DisplayName "Allow ICMPv4-In" –Protocol ICMPv4

    Though ping is used to communicate between VMs in this tutorial, allowing ICMP through the Windows Firewall for production deployments isn't recommended.

  7. To connect to myVm2 from myVm1, enter the following command from a command prompt on myVm1:

    mstsc /v:10.1.0.4

  8. Enter the username and password you specified when creating myVm2 and select Yes if you receive a certificate warning during the sign-in process.

    Screenshot of R D P credential screen for R D P session from first virtual machine to second virtual machine.

  9. Since you enabled ping on myVm1, you can now ping it from myVm2:

    ping 10.0.0.4

    Screenshot of second virtual machine pinging first virtual machine.

  10. Disconnect your RDP sessions to both myVm1 and myVm2.

Clean up resources

When no longer needed, delete the resource group and all resources it contains:

  1. Enter myResourceGroup in the Search box at the top of the Azure portal. When you see myResourceGroup in the search results, select it.

  2. Select Delete resource group.

  3. Enter myResourceGroup for TYPE THE RESOURCE GROUP NAME: and select Delete.

Next steps

In this tutorial, you:

  • Created virtual network peering between two virtual networks.
  • Tested the communication between two virtual machines over the virtual network peering using ping command.

To learn more about a virtual network peering:

Virtual network peering