Azure VM Open Public Static Outbound IP

Question

I wrote a small service to capture files from one ftp server, edit them, and then send them to another ftp server. The trick the FTP server is sent to requires a whitelist of IP addresses. Now I decided to host this service on Azure VM with a virtual public IP address, believing that it would create a static IP address that I could use for whitelisting.

Unfortunately, although the VM indicates that the virtual public reserved IP address is connected to the virtual machine, when I open the browser and go to whatismyip.com, I get a completely different IP address, and, of course, Azure disconnects all virtual machines every 2-3 months for maintenance (which, I believe, clears the IP address).

Now I understand that the IP address obtained from whatismyip.com is probably related to the Azure load balancer, but I can’t understand my life, why it will be the one that appears for outgoing connections.

My questions:

• Is it possible to get a static public IP address for outgoing connections for this whitelist?

• Is there some obvious workaround that I am missing?

• Will Azure scheduled service outages save IP information?

• Is Azure just not a good platform for this kind of work? If so, then what?

Answer 1

Now it is really possible. See https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/virtual-networks-reserved-public-ip/ for more details.

The powershell code is as follows:

New-AzureReservedIP –ReservedIPName MyReservedIP –Location "Central US" $image = Get-AzureVMImage|?{$_.ImageName -like "*RightImage-Windows-2012R2-x64*"} New-AzureVMConfig -Name TestVM -InstanceSize Small -ImageName $image.ImageName ` | Add-AzureProvisioningConfig -Windows -AdminUsername adminuser -Password MyP@ssw0rd !! ` | New-AzureVM -ServiceName TestService -ReservedIPName MyReservedIP -Location "Central US" 

In addition, outgoing connections now use only a few default IP addresses. You can see them on the new portal: https://portal.azure.com on the site Settings → Properties