Apr 10, 2021
User-defined routing – Implementing and Managing Virtual Networking

User-defined routing

By default, Azure automatically creates system routes and assigns them to the different subnets within a VNet. These routes can’t be removed but can be overridden by custom routes known as User-Defined Routes (UDRs). These routes have a next hop setting that points to the next interface from a routing perspective so that traffic can be sent to the correct destination.

There are three main next hop types for system routes:

• VNet: This routes traffic betweenaddress ranges within the address space of a VNet.

• Internet: This routes traffic specifiedby the address prefix to the internet; the default route is 0.0.0.0/0, which means anything by default is routed to the internet.

• None: Traffic routed to a next hop type as none is dropped.

UDRs create a route table if you want to create custom routes. When working with UDRs, it is important to note that they support the preceding routing types as well as the following:

• VNet gateway: This is used to route trafficto a VNet gateway.

• Virtual appliance: A virtual appliance is a VM that usually acts as a firewall.

Let’s go ahead and create a UDR via the Azure portal to forward all traffic to a

VNet gateway:

  1. Navigate to the Azure portal by opening a web browser and navigating to https://portal.azure.com.
  2. Select Create a resource. Search for Route table and click on Create:

Figure 14.18 – Creating a new route table via the Azure portal

  1. Next, select the subscription and RG that the route table needs to be deployed to. Enter the region and name and set Propagate gateway routes to Yes:

Figure 14.19 – The route table creation configuration settings

  1. Now that the route table has been created, you can select it, and under Settings, select Routes, and then click on Add:

Figure 14.20 – Adding a new route on the newly created route table

  1. Next, enter the route name as VPN-Traffic and the address prefix as
    0.0.0.0/0 (which indicates all traffic), setNext hop type to Virtual network gateway, and click OK:

Figure 14.21 – The new route configuration settings

  1. Finally, we’ll have to verify whether the route is showing up under Routes:

Figure 14.22 – The newly configured route successfully created

We encourage students to read up further on Azure user-defined routing (UDRs) by visiting the following link: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/ virtual-network/virtual-networks-udr-overview.

In this section, we created a route table with a custom route to route all traffic via the VPN gateway. Next, we are going to look at implementing subnets.

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