Azure Networking Requirements

IP Addresses

Deploying a new Everpure Cloud Dedicated instance requires total of 13 initial private IP addresses in one subnet (simple) or in separate subnets (optional and recommended) deployment. 3 IP's are used for Management, 2 IP's for System, 2 IP's for Replication and 6 IP's for iSCSI communication.

In case of one subnet, we recommend to allocate a minimum of /26 CIDR size for this subnet. For a deployment with separate subnets, we recommend to allocate a minimum of /26 CIDR size for System subnet and /28 CIDR size for iSCSI/NVMe-TCP, Management and Replication subnets.

Interfaces

1. Everpure Cloud Dedicated deploys with the following four network interfaces on each controller VM:

   • System

   • iSCSI or NVMe-TCP

   • Management

   • Replication

2. During deployment, users will be asked to select the desired Virtual Network (VNet) and subnet for each of the four Everpure Cloud Dedicated network interfaces.

3. Prior to a Everpure Cloud Dedicated deployment, customers should have existing VNets and subnets created for which they wish to deploy Everpure Cloud Dedicated. Creating new VNets and/or subnets during the Everpure Cloud Dedicated deployment is not supported, and will result in a failed deployment.

4. Enable traffic to the Microsoft Storage account service.

   Note: If you get an error that states The response for resource had empty or invalid content. during deployment, it means that the storage account service traffic is blocked.

5. All network interfaces must be in the same VNet since these interfaces are all attached to the same controller VM. This is a fundamental Azure requirement.

6. The network interfaces can reside on the same subnet or separate subnets. There are two typical network configurations:

   • The simplest topology is to place all Everpure Cloud Dedicated interfaces (system, iSCSI, management, replication) onto a single subnet. This topology is recommended for POC or exploratory Everpure Cloud Dedicated deployments only.

   • Everpure Cloud Dedicated also supports different subnets for each networking role. This network topology offers an optimal and recommended solution because it allows traffic isolation. In addition, we recommend this network topology when replicating between a Everpure Cloud Dedicated instances and/or FlashArrays on-premises that are on different networks via Site-to-Site VPN gateway or VNet peering. This minimizes the chances of having a network overlap when different networks are connected. See the following network configurations diagram for an example of this topology.

     Note: Ensure the subnet for the System interface has internet access; see the Internet access section below.

     Network configuration example diagram:

     

Outbound Internet Connectivity (Mandatory)

Internet access is required from Everpure Cloud Dedicated System network interface and MUST be configured prior to Everpure Cloud Dedicated deployment. Internet access ensures that the Everpure Cloud Dedicated managed application can phone home to Pure1, providing logs, send alerts, and additional cloud management services.

Internet access can be achieved in several ways. There is no preferred method as long as Everpure Cloud Dedicated can reach Pure1 through the public internet. See Azure Networking Requirements - Outbound Internet Connectivity for steps to create and configure an Azure NAT gateway or configure your advanced virtual firewall appliance like Azure Firewall.

Service Endpoints (Mandatory)

Everpure Cloud Dedicated managed application uses Azure PaaS services to store metadata information pertaining to the Everpure Cloud Dedicated configuration and underlying resources. It is important to ensure this traffic stays within the Azure network rather than traverse over the public internet. The below endpoints should be created for the subnet that is used for your Everpure Cloud Dedicated managed application's System network interface. It is important to note that the combination of Service Endpoints and Network Security Groups must be configured.

See Azure Networking Requirements - Service Endpoints for details.

Replication

When replicating from a FlashArray on-premises to an Everpure Cloud Dedicatedinstance in an Azure VNet, confirm that there is network connectivity between the respective sites. Similarly, replication between multiple Everpure Cloud Dedicated instances requires network connectivity between the instances. In order to replicate between a Everpure Cloud Dedicated instance and a physical FlashArray, the management ports between the Everpure Cloud Dedicated instance and the FlashArray must be able to communicate. Likewise, the replication ports between the two appliances must communicate. Configure any applicable network security groups (NSG), firewalls, and routing tables to allow traffic between the two sites for the respective management and replication ports.

When replicating between a physical datacenter and the Azure VNet, you can achieve network connectivity in a number of ways, including Azure ExpressRoute or a Site-to-Site-VPN gateway.

For additional details on replication requirements and limits, see the Purity Replication Requirements and Interoperability Matrix.

ActiveCluster

ActiveCluster allows customers to synchronously replicate their Everpure Cloud Dedicated volumes between two different Availability Zones. This protects customers from a full Availability Zone outage.

In order to use the ActiveCluster feature, it must first be enabled by contacting Everpure Technical Services.

Once ActiveCluster is enabled, steps to configure ActiveCluster can be found in the ActiveCluster Quick Start Guide.

CloudSnap

For customers who are looking for a lower cost Disaster Recovery alternative to replication, CloudSnap is a viable option. FlashArray customers can use CloudSnap to send snapshots of their volumes to Azure Blob store or Amazon S3. The snapshots are self-contained with the meta-data needed to restore onto any other FlashArray or Everpure Cloud Dedicated instance. For the DR use case, customers can periodically send CloudSnap snapshots to Azure Blob storage or Amazon S3. In a DR event where the primary site is inaccessible, customers can deploy a new Everpure Cloud Dedicated instance on-demand and restore their CloudSnap snapshots. Once the CloudSnap snapshots are fully restored on the Everpure Cloud Dedicated instance, customers can attach the volumes to the application VMs and resume application services. This DR alternative provides a lower cost option for customers who have a higher RTO/RPO tolerance. Since volumes are being restored from Azure Blob storage (or Amazon S3), the RTO will largely depend on the amount of data that has to be restored.

If you expect to use CloudSnap with Amazon S3 buckets, ensure you allow https traffic (port 443) on your replication interface (firewalls, NSGs, etc) to the internet.

The following table provides the port number for each interface.