Tutorial: Migrate outbound access to Azure NAT Gateway

In this tutorial, you learn how to migrate your outbound connectivity from default outbound access to a NAT gateway.

You learn how to change your outbound connectivity from load balancer outbound rules to a NAT gateway. You reuse the IP address from the outbound rule configuration for the NAT gateway.

Azure NAT Gateway is the recommended method for outbound connectivity. A NAT gateway is a fully managed and highly resilient Network Address Translation (NAT) service. A NAT gateway doesn't have the same limitations of Source Network Address Translation (SNAT) port exhaustion as default outbound access. A NAT gateway replaces the need for outbound rules in a load balancer for outbound connectivity.

For more information about Azure NAT Gateway, see What is Azure NAT Gateway?

In this tutorial, you learn how to:

Prerequisites

• An Azure account with an active subscription. Create an account for trial.

• A standard public load balancer in your subscription. The load balancer must have a separate frontend IP address and outbound rules configured. For more information on creating an Azure Load Balancer, see Quickstart: Create a public load balancer to load balance virtual machines using the Azure portal.

  • The load balancer name used in the examples is load-balancer.

Create a resource group

Create a resource group to contain all resources for this tutorial.

1. Sign in to the Azure portal.

2. In the search box at the top of the portal enter Resource group. Select Resource groups in the search results.

3. Select + Create.

4. In the Basics tab of Create a resource group, enter, or select the following information.

   Setting	Value
   Subscription	Select your subscription
   Resource group	test-rg
   Region	China North 3

5. Select Review + create.

6. Select Create.

Migrate default outbound access

In this section, you learn how to change your outbound connectivity method from default outbound access to a NAT gateway.

1. In the search box at the top of the Azure portal, enter Public IP address. Select Public IP addresses in the search results.

2. Select Create.

3. Enter the following information in Create public IP address.

   Setting	Value
   Subscription	Select your subscription.
   Resource group	Select your resource group. The example uses test-rg.
   Region	Select a region. This example uses China North 3.
   Name	Enter public-ip-nat.
   IP version	Select IPv4.
   SKU	Select Standard.
   Availability zone	Select Zone-redundant.
   Tier	Select Regional.

4. Select Review + create and then select Create.

5. In the search box at the top of the Azure portal, enter NAT gateway. Select NAT gateways in the search results.

6. Select Create.

7. Enter or select the following information in the Basics tab of Create network address translation (NAT) gateway.

   Setting	Value
   Project details
   Subscription	Select your subscription.
   Resource group	Select test-rg or your resource group.
   Instance details
   NAT gateway name	Enter nat-gateway.
   Region	Select your region. This example uses China North 3.
   Availability zone	Leave the default of None.
   TCP idle timeout (minutes)	Leave the default of 4.

8. Select Next.

9. In the Outbound IP tab, select public IP addresses or prefixes.

10. Select Next.

11. In the Subnet tab, in Virtual network, select your virtual network. In this example, it's test-rg.

12. Select specific subnets, select your subnet. In this example, it's subnet-1.

13. Select Review + create, then select Create.

Migrate load balancer outbound connectivity

In this section, you learn how to change your outbound connectivity method from outbound rules to a NAT gateway. You keep the same frontend IP address used for the outbound rules. You remove the outbound rule's frontend IP configuration then create a NAT gateway with the same frontend IP address. A public load balancer is used throughout this section.

Remove outbound rule frontend IP configuration

You remove the outbound rule and the associated frontend IP configuration from your load balancer. The load balancer name used in this example is load-balancer.

1. In the search box at the top of the portal, enter Load balancer. Select Load balancers in the search results.

2. Select load-balancer or your load balancer.

3. Expand Settings. Select Frontend IP configuration.

4. Note the IP address in Frontend IP configuration that you wish to migrate to a NAT gateway. You'll need this information in the next section. In this example, it's frontend-ip-outbound.

5. Select Delete next to the IP configuration you wish to remove. In this example, it's frontend-ip-outbound.

6. Select Delete.

7. In Delete frontend-ip-outbound, select the check box next to I have read and understood that this frontend IP configuration as well as the associated resources listed above will be deleted.

8. Select Delete. This procedure deletes the frontend IP configuration and the outbound rule associated with the frontend.

Create NAT gateway

In this section, you create a NAT gateway with the IP address previously used for outbound rule and assign it to your precreated subnet within your virtual network. The subnet name for this example is subnet-1.

1. In the search box at the top of the Azure portal, enter NAT gateway. Select NAT gateways in the search results.

2. Select Create.

3. Enter or select the following information in the Basics tab of Create network address translation (NAT) gateway.

   Setting	Value
   Project details
   Subscription	Select your subscription.
   Resource group	Select test-rg or your resource group.
   Instance details
   NAT gateway name	Enter nat-gateway.
   Region	Select your region. This example uses China North 3.
   Availability zone	Leave the default of None.
   TCP idle timeout (minutes)	Leave the default of 4.

4. Select Next.

5. In the Outbound IP tab, select public IP addresses or prefixes.

6. Select Next.

7. In the Subnet tab, in Virtual network, select your virtual network. In this example, it's test-rg.

8. Select specific subnets, select your subnet. In this example, it's subnet-1.

9. Select Review + create, then select Create.

Next steps

In this article, you learned how to:

• Migrate default outbound access to a NAT gateway.

• Migrate load balancer outbound connectivity and IP address to a NAT gateway.

For more information about NAT gateway and the connectivity benefits it provides, see Design virtual networks with NAT gateway.

Advance to the next article to learn how to integrate a NAT gateway with a public load balancer: