Diagnose a virtual machine network routing problem - Azure PowerShell

In this article, you deploy a virtual machine (VM), and then check communications to an IP address and URL. You determine the cause of a communication failure and how you can resolve it.

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

If you choose to install and use PowerShell locally, this article requires the Azure PowerShell Az module. To find the installed version, run Get-Module -ListAvailable Az. If you need to upgrade, see Install Azure PowerShell module. If you are running PowerShell locally, you also need to run Connect-AzAccount -Environment AzureChinaCloud to create a connection with Azure.

Create a VM

Before you can create a VM, you must create a resource group to contain the VM. Create a resource group with New-AzResourceGroup. The following example creates a resource group named myResourceGroup in the chinaeast location.

New-AzResourceGroup -Name myResourceGroup -Location ChinaEast

Create the VM with New-AzVM. When running this step, you are prompted for credentials. The values that you enter are configured as the user name and password for the VM.

$vM = New-AzVm `
    -ResourceGroupName "myResourceGroup" `
    -Name "myVm" `
    -Location "China East"

The VM takes a few minutes to create. Don't continue with remaining steps until the VM is created and PowerShell returns output.

Test network communication

To test network communication with Network Watcher, you must first enable a network watcher in the region the VM that you want to test is in, and then use Network Watcher's next hop capability to test communication.

Enable network watcher

If you already have a network watcher enabled in the China East region, use Get-AzNetworkWatcher to retrieve the network watcher. The following example retrieves an existing network watcher named NetworkWatcher_chinaeast that is in the NetworkWatcherRG resource group:

$networkWatcher = Get-AzNetworkWatcher `
  -Name NetworkWatcher_chinaeast `
  -ResourceGroupName NetworkWatcherRG

If you don't already have a network watcher enabled in the China East region, use New-AzNetworkWatcher to create a network watcher in the China East region:

$networkWatcher = New-AzNetworkWatcher `
  -Name "NetworkWatcher_chinaeast" `
  -ResourceGroupName "NetworkWatcherRG" `
  -Location "China East"

Use next hop

Azure automatically creates routes to default destinations. You may create custom routes that override the default routes. Sometimes, custom routes can cause communication to fail. To test routing from a VM, use the Get-AzNetworkWatcherNextHop command to determine the next routing hop when traffic is destined for a specific address.

Test outbound communication from the VM to one of the IP addresses for www.bing.com:

Get-AzNetworkWatcherNextHop `
  -NetworkWatcher $networkWatcher `
  -TargetVirtualMachineId $VM.Id `
  -SourceIPAddress 192.168.1.4 `
  -DestinationIPAddress 13.107.21.200

After a few seconds, the output informs you that the NextHopType is Internet, and that the RouteTableId is System Route. This result lets you know that there is a valid route to the destination.

Test outbound communication from the VM to 172.31.0.100:

Get-AzNetworkWatcherNextHop `
  -NetworkWatcher $networkWatcher `
  -TargetVirtualMachineId $VM.Id `
  -SourceIPAddress 192.168.1.4 `
  -DestinationIPAddress 172.31.0.100

The output returned informs you that None is the NextHopType, and that the RouteTableId is also System Route. This result lets you know that, while there is a valid system route to the destination, there is no next hop to route the traffic to the destination.

View details of a route

To analyze routing further, review the effective routes for the network interface with the Get-AzEffectiveRouteTable command:

Get-AzEffectiveRouteTable `
  -NetworkInterfaceName myVm `
  -ResourceGroupName myResourceGroup |
  Format-table

Output that includes the following text is returned:

Name State  Source  AddressPrefix           NextHopType NextHopIpAddress
---- -----  ------  -------------           ----------- ----------------
     Active Default {192.168.0.0/16}        VnetLocal   {}              
     Active Default {0.0.0.0/0}             Internet    {}              
     Active Default {10.0.0.0/8}            None        {}              
     Active Default {100.64.0.0/10}         None        {}              
     Active Default {172.16.0.0/12}         None        {}              

As you can see in the previous output, the route with the AddressPrefix of 0.0.0.0/0 routes all traffic not destined for addresses within other route's address prefixes with a next hop of Internet. As you can also see in the output, though there is a default route to the 172.16.0.0/12 prefix, which includes the 172.31.0.100 address, the nextHopType is None. Azure creates a default route to 172.16.0.0/12, but doesn't specify a next hop type until there is a reason to. If, for example, you added the 172.16.0.0/12 address range to the address space of the virtual network, Azure changes the nextHopType to Virtual network for the route. A check would then show Virtual network as the nextHopType.

Clean up resources

When no longer needed, you can use Remove-AzResourceGroup to remove the resource group and all of the resources it contains:

Remove-AzResourceGroup -Name myResourceGroup -Force

Next steps

In this article, you created a VM and diagnosed network routing from the VM. You learned that Azure creates several default routes and tested routing to two different destinations. Learn more about routing in Azure and how to create custom routes.

For outbound VM connections, you can also determine the latency and allowed and denied network traffic between the VM and an endpoint using Network Watcher's connection troubleshoot capability. You can monitor communication between a VM and an endpoint, such as an IP address or URL over time using the Network Watcher connection monitor capability. For more information, see Monitor a network connection.