Understanding the Azure Route Server

Azure Route Server is a new offering from Microsoft that simplifies the routing in your infrastructure, especially if you have a Network Virtual Appliance or NVA. It eliminates the need to manually configure or maintain route tables. It is a fully managed service and is configured with high availability.

This service works with:

1. Network Virtual Appliance or NVA
2. ExpressRoute
3. Azure VPN Gateway

You can enable or disable the route exchange on the Azure Route Server with a simple command. Also, you don't need to manually configure or maintain route tables.

With NVAs, it allows you to exchange routing information directly through Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) routing protocol between any NVA that supports the BGP routing protocol and the Azure Virtual Network.

Pre-requisite

1. For you to be able to set up an Azure Route Server, you need to have an empty subnet in your virtual network with the name "RouteServerSubnet". This subnet should have an address space with a prefix of at least "/27" or higher.
2. The NVA should allow the BGP protocol to leverage the benefits of having the Azure Route Server.

Benefits

Azure Route Server simplifies the configuration, management, and deployment of your NVA in your virtual network.

1. You no longer need to manually update the routing table on your NVA whenever your virtual network addresses are updated.
2. You no longer need to update User-Defined Routes manually whenever your NVA announces new routes or withdraw old ones.
3. You can peer multiple instances of your NVA with Azure Route Server.
4. The interface between NVA and Azure Route Server is based on a common standard protocol i.e. BGP.
5. You can deploy Azure Route Server in any of your new or existing virtual networks.

In the next blog post, we will create an Azure Route Server in the Azure portal. You can view that post here: Creating the Azure Route Server