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Extend Microsoft Azure and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Interconnect using Azure Virtual WAN

Introduction

To create an integrated multicloud experience, Microsoft and Oracle offer direct interconnection between Azure and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) through ExpressRoute and FastConnect. Through the ExpressRoute and FastConnect interconnection, customers can experience low latency, high throughput, and private direct connectivity between the two clouds.

You can set up interconnect connectivity between Azure and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) using the instructions provided in this step-by-step guide. Once interconnect is set up, you must connect Virtual Network to ExpressRoute.

This tutorial outlines how you can connect your ExpressRoute to Azure Virtual WAN and extend the Virtual Network connectivity to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure using interconnection.

Similarly, you must extend the connectivity from your Oracle Virtual Cloud Networks to Azure environment using interconnect, to understand that you can follow this step-by-step guide.

Objective

Extend network connectivity between Oracle Cloud Infrastructure and Microsoft Azure environment through OCI-Azure Interconnect using Azure Virtual WAN. We have covered deploying the environment within Azure and OCI and validating network connectivity between OCI/Azure interconnected regions.

Prerequisites

Audience

This tutorial is intended for Cloud Service Providers professionals and MultiCloud administrators.

Architecture

Below is a sample network topology and high level architecture of the solution.

OCI Azure Interconnect Virtual WAN Interconnect Connectivity Architecture

You can refer to this architecture when you want to extend interconnected region connectivity using ExpressRoute Cross Connections and regions peering within OCI regions.

Task 1: Create a Virtual WAN on Azure

In this section, you’ll create a Virtual WAN and below table shows minimum parameters required.

Parameter Value
resource-group-name Select your-resource-group. Select the resource group which you must have created during pre-reqs steps.
region-name Select region-name.
name Enter virtual-vwan-name.
type Select Standard which supports VNets, ExpressRoute endpoints and more connectivity options.

You can follow the step-by-step guide to create a Virtual WAN. Proceed to next section to create a Virtual Hub and ExpressRoute Gateway.

Task 2: Create a Virtual Hub and ExpressRoute Gateway on Azure

In this section, you’ll create a Virtual Hub and ExpressRoute Gateway to previously created Virtual WAN and below table shows minimum parameters required.

You can follow the step-by-step guide to create a virtual Hub and ExpressRoute Gateway. Proceed to next section to create a Virtual Network and Subnet.

Task 3: Create the virtual network and subnet on Azure

In this section, you’ll create a virtual network and subnet:

  1. On the upper-left side of the screen, select Create a resource, Networking, Virtual network or search for Virtual network in the search box.

  2. In Create virtual network, enter or select this information in the Basics tab:

    Setting Value
    Project Details  
    Subscription Select your Azure subscription
    Resource Group Select Create new, enter resource-group-name, then select OK, or select an existing resource-group-name based on parameters.
    Instance details  
    Name Enter virtual-network-name
    Region Select region-name

  3. Select the IP Addresses tab or select the Next: IP Addresses button at the end of the page.

  4. In the IP Addresses tab, enter this information:

    Setting Value
    IPv4 address space Enter IPv4-address-space Example: 10.20.0.0/16 as per our use-case topology

  5. Under Subnet name, select the word default

  6. In Edit subnet, enter this information:

    Setting Value
    Subnet name Enter subnet-name
    Subnet address range Enter subnet-address-range Example: 10.20.1.0/24 for Compute Subnet

  7. Select Save.

  8. Select the Review + create tab or select the Review + create button.

  9. Select Create.

Proceed to next section to connect your Virtual Network to the virtual hub.

Task 4: Connect your virtual network to the Virtual Hub on Azure

In this section, you’ll connect your previously create Virtual Network (VNet) to Virtual Hub and below table shows minimum parameters required:

You can follow the step-by-step guide to connect your VNet to Virtual Hub. Proceed to the next section to connect your ExpressRoute Circuit to Virtual Hub ExpressRoute Gateway.

Task 5: Connect your ExpressRoute Circuit to the Virtual Hub ExpressRoute Gateway on Azure

In this section, you can follow the step-by-step guide to connect your VNet to Virtual Hub. Proceed to the next section to create Virtual machines to validate the traffic between Azure and OCI.

Task 6: Create virtual machine on Azure

In this section you will create virtual machines to validate the connectivity from Azure to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure:

  1. On the upper-left side of the screen in the Azure portal, select Create a resource > Compute > Virtual machine.

  2. In Create a virtual machine - Basics, enter or select this information:

    Setting Value
    Project details  
    Subscription Select your subscription.
    Resource group Select your-resource-group. Select the resource group which you must have created during pre-requisites steps.
    Instance details  
    Virtual machine name Enter myVM.
    Region Select (US) East US or Region where you are deploying.
    Availability options Leave the default No infrastructure redundancy required.
    Image Select Ubuntu Server 18.04 LTS - Gen1.
    Size Select Standard_B2s.
    Administrator account  
    Authentication type Select Password. You can also choose SSH based authentication and update required value as needed.
    Username Enter a username of your choosing.
    Password Enter a password of your choosing. The password must be at least 12 characters long and meet the defined complexity requirements.
    Confirm Password Re-enter password.
    Inbound port rules  
    Public inbound ports Select None.

  3. Select Next: Disks.

  4. In Create a virtual machine - Disks, leave the defaults and select Next: Networking.

  5. In Create a virtual machine - Networking, select this information:

    Setting Value
    Virtual network Select virtual-network.
    Subnet Select myVMVNet for example: 10.20.1.0/24 in US East Region.
    Public IP Leave the default (new) myVM-ip.
    Public inbound ports Select Allow selected ports.
    Select inbound ports Select SSH.

  6. Select Review + create. You’re taken to the Review + create page where Azure validates your configuration.

  7. When you see the Validation passed message, select Create.

Proceed to the next section to create required resources on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.

Task 7: Create resources on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure

In this section you will create required resources to support validation from OCI console within interconnected regions. In the OCI console, create following resources:

You can follow this step-by-step guide to create a VM and complete required Virtual Cloud Network/Subnet work.

Once you have created required resources & configuration based on architecture, proceed to next section to validate interconnected regions connectivity.

Task 8: Validate the traffic in OCI/Azure Interconnect

In this section you will connect to the Linux VMs of both Cloud Providers and do a ping test to check the connectivity.

  1. Connect to Linux VMs on both cloud providers using your terminal.

  2. Initiate a ICMP RTT from Azure VM to OCI VM and vice-versa.

    • This will ensure network connectivity.

    • Below table shows a connectivity test performed based on shared use-case network topology.

      Traffic Validation SRIOV/Accelerated Networking ICMP RTT (Milliseconds)
      Azure VM to OCI VM 10.20.1.4 > 10.10.0.168 yes 2.2
      OCI VM to Azure VM 10.10.0.168 > 10.20.1.4 yes 2.1

    • ICMP RTT between Azure and OCI reflects close to 2 ms.

      Note: The above table reflects ICMP RTT as a reference point which could vary depending on the regions and use case architecture. It’s recommended to do a POC.

You can find more information about Azure latency between regions in: Microsoft Learn: Azure network round-trip latency statistics.

For more information on who test Virtual Machine latency consult: Microsoft Learn: Test Azure virtual machine network latency in an Azure virtual network.

Task 9: Clean up resources

When you are done using the resources, delete the resource group and associated resources:

  1. Delete the interconnect link if you haven’t done already. For details see the step-by-step guide.

  2. Enter your-resource-group-name in the Search box at the top of the portal and select your-resource-group-name from the search results.

  3. Select Delete resource group.

  4. Enter your-resource-group-name for TYPE THE RESOURCE GROUP NAME and select Delete.

  5. Similarly delete deployed this tutorial resources in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.

In this tutorial, you explored how you can use Virtual WAN to extend the Azure and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure interconnect connectivity and validate the traffic.

You connected to the VMs on both Cloud Providers and extended the connectivity from Virtual Network to Virtual Cloud Network using interconnect via Virtual WAN.

Acknowledgments

More Learning Resources

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