Bridging the Cloud: A Step-by-Step Guide to Azure VNet-to-VNet VPNs

This consolidated guide is designed for a single long-form technical blog post. It follows the narrative of Planning → Building → Connecting → Verifying . When building multi-tier applications or connecting different business units in Azure, you often need a secure, encrypted path for data. While VNet Peering is fast, VNet-to-VNet VPN connections provide an IPSec/IKE encrypted tunnel that stays entirely on the Azure backbone network. In this guide, we will build a complete lab from scratch using PowerShell. The Architecture We will create two separate virtual networks in the East US 2 region. To ensure routing works, we must use non-overlapping address spaces: VNet-A (Hub): 10.0.0.0/16 VNet-B (Branch): 10.1.0.0/16 Phase 1: The Foundation First, we wipe any old configurations and build our networks, subnets, and test virtual machines. # 1. Setup Variables $rgName = "Azure-VPN-Lab-RG" $location = "eastus2" $adminUser = "azureuser" $adminPass = ConvertTo-SecureString "P@ssw0rd1234!!" -AsP