One of the major challenges that customers face for cloud adoption is networking issues, particularly high network latency, which affects how fast data can be transferred from one location to another. These delays are not only frustrating to end-users but are costly to businesses.
Today, Skytap integrates with Microsoft Azure ExpressRoute to provide a standard 1 Gbps ExpressRoute circuit to customers. There are multiple use cases where Microsoft Azure customers need more control over their ExpressRoute configuration (Global Reach, connecting across geopolitical regions, different bandwidths, etc.). We are excited to announce that Skytap is extending integration with Azure ExpressRoute to let Microsoft Azure customers provision an ExpressRoute circuit in their Azure subscription and integrate with Skytap. With just a few clicks in Skytap, you can make your connection fast, reliable, and secure. Use your Microsoft Azure ExpressRoute circuit to extend your data center, build hybrid applications, establish private connections into Azure, manage the hybrid cloud, and more.
More information: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/expressroute/expressroute-howto-circuit-portal-resource-manager
Skytap customers can create an ExpressRoute by navigating to the WANs page and creating either a Skytap-managed or customer-managed circuit. You’ll need an Azure subscription ID with ExpressRoute Circuit created in your Azure portal when choosing the latter. In the self-managed model, the customer has full control over the ExpressRoute circuit configuration and is directly responsible for all ExpressRoute charges.
During the ExpressRoute creation process, customers can choose any of the Skytap Azure regions for connecting the ExpressRoute circuits that match their use case. You can also choose between the offered SKUs (if you need to extend traffic globally, the Premium SKU provides that capability) and the billing model that best fits your needs.
Once you have the service key you can integrate the ExpressRoute circuit and complete the setup in Skytap. For customers looking to enable Global Reach, you can link ExpressRoute circuits together to make a private network between your on-premises network and an ExpressRoute circuit that connects your on-premises infrastructure to Microsoft cloud services through a connectivity provider like Skytap. When creating a customer-managed circuit, both the Resource ID and Authorization key are available in the Azure portal within your account.
ExpressRoute Use Cases:
- Dev/Test – Move large VMs back and forth between on-premises production environments and Skytap.
- vNet – Connect Skytap environments to an Azure virtual network in the same or different regions.
Find out more about creating a PNC with Express route on Skytap here: https://help.skytap.com/wan-create-self-managed-expressroute.html
