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About zone-redundant virtual network gateway in Azure availability zones

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This article helps you create a zone-redundant virtual network gateway in Azure availability zones. This brings resiliency, scalability, and higher availability to virtual network gateways. Deploying gateways in Azure availability zones physically and logically separates gateways within a region, while protecting your on-premises network connectivity to Azure from zone-level failures. For information, see About zone-redundant virtual network gateways and What are Azure regions and availability zones?

Zone-redundant gateways

To automatically deploy your virtual network gateways across availability zones, you can use zone-redundant virtual network gateways. With zone-redundant gateways, you can benefit from zone-resiliency to access your mission-critical, scalable services on Azure.



zone-redundant gateways graphic

Zonal gateways

To deploy gateways in a specific zone, you can use zonal gateways. When you deploy a zonal gateway, all instances of the gateway are deployed in the same availability zone.



zonal gateways graphic

Gateway SKUs

Zone-redundant and zonal gateways are available as gateway SKUs. We have added new virtual network gateway SKUs in Azure AZ regions. These SKUs are similar to the corresponding existing SKUs for ExpressRoute and VPN Gateway, except that they're specific to zone-redundant and zonal gateways. You can identify these SKUs by the "AZ" in the SKU name.

For information about gateway SKUs, see VPN gateway SKUs and ExpressRoute gateway SKUs.

Public IP SKUs

Zone-redundant, zonal and non-zonal gateways rely on the configuration of Standard SKU of Azure public IP resource. If you create a public IP resource with a Basic SKU, the gateway won't have any zone redundancy, and the gateway resources are regional.

For more information, see Availability zones.

Zone-redundant gateways

When you create a public IP address using the Standard public IP SKU with zone-redundant option, the behavior differs depending on whether the gateway is a VPN gateway, or an ExpressRoute gateway.

  • For a VPN gateway, the two gateway instances are deployed in any two out of these three zones to provide zone-redundancy.
  • For an ExpressRoute gateway, since there can be more than two instances, the gateway can span across all the three zones.

Zonal gateways

When you create a public IP address using the Standard public IP SKU and specify the Zone (1, 2, or 3), all the gateway instances are deployed in the same zone.

Non-zonal or regional gateways

A non-zonal or regional gateway doesn't have zone-redundancy. These gateways are created in the following scenarios:

  • When you create a public IP address using the Standard public IP SKU with the "No Zone" option
  • When you create a public IP address using the Basic public IP SKU

FAQ

What will change when I deploy these SKUs?

From your perspective, you can deploy your gateways with zone-redundancy. This means that all instances of the gateways will be deployed across Azure availability zones, and each availability zone is a different fault and update domain. This makes your gateways more reliable, available, and resilient to zone failures.

Can I use the Azure portal?

Yes, you can use the Azure portal to deploy these SKUs. However, you see these SKUs only in those Azure regions that have Azure availability zones.

What regions are available for me to use these SKUs?

These SKUs are available in Azure regions that have Azure availability zones. For more information, see Azure regions with availability zones.

Can I change/migrate/upgrade my existing virtual network gateways to zone-redundant or zonal gateways?

  • VPN gateway - migrating your existing virtual network gateways to zone-redundant or zonal gateways is currently not supported. You can, however, delete your existing gateway and re-create a zone-redundant or zonal gateway.
  • ExpressRoute gateway - migrating your existing ExpressRoute virtual network gateway to a zone-redundant or zonal gateway is currently in public preview. For more information, see Migrate to an availability zone enabled ExpressRoute virtual network gateway.

Can I deploy both VPN and ExpressRoute gateways in same virtual network?

Coexistence of both VPN and ExpressRoute gateways in the same virtual network is supported. However, you should reserve a /27 IP address range for the gateway subnet.

Zone-redundant. With this configuration, the virtual network gateway instances are spread across Azure availability zones, removing a single Azure availability zone as a single point of failure.

Zonal deployments should only be configured if the target application is highly latency-sensitive and requires all Azure resources to be deployed to the same Availability zone.

Next steps

Create a zone-redundant virtual network gateway