Microsoft finally roll out IPv6 on Azure – sort of.
Last month Microsoft announced the general availability of IPv6 on Azure.
I thought this was excellent news. I had been waiting for this a long time and with much enthusiasm I logged into our Azure Portal. They have indeed taken IPv6 out of beta but there are some caveats worth mentioning. The COVID-19 stuff is keeping me a bit busy so I will just throw out the two biggest issues I came across:
- You cannot set a PTR for an IPv6 on Azure! Your mail server would hate that…
- They price IPv6 * per address * just like IPv4. Wait… What ?
That’s right. Where most of the industry give you a /64 for the price of a single IPv4 address Azure have the audacity to cheerfully announce that a single IPv6 address won’t cost you any extra:
IPv6 Azure resources and bandwidth are charged at the same rates as IPv4. There are no additional or different charges for IPv6.
Queue the abrupt showstopper record scratch sound effect….
This is where my enthusiasm faded. Who hands out single IPv6 ? You can request a public IPv6 prefix but there they limit you to a /124.
Many applications will need a /64 or at least a /112 prefix. OpenVPN server for example. But at IPv4 pricing that /64 IPv6 prefix would cost millions of dollars a month so I am out.
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[…] I was excited last year when Azure made IPv6 GA but was taken aback when I saw they only issue single /128 and charge the same as IPv4. […]