Question

A company runs a set of stateless web-processing VMs in an Azure virtual network. The VMs sit behind an internal (private) Standard Load Balancer that receives traffic from an on-premises system over ExpressRoute. The VMs also need to make outbound calls to a third-party public REST API. Because the internal load balancer provides no outbound connectivity, the architect must add a scalable, predictable, and stable-IP outbound path for the VMs so the third-party vendor can allow-list the source address. Which solution should the architect recommend?

Accepted Answer

Deploy a NAT Gateway with a static public IP and associate it with the VM subnet.

Answer

Assign an instance-level public IP address to each VM's network interface.

Answer

Add outbound rules to the existing internal Standard Load Balancer with a public IP backend pool.

Answer

Enable default outbound access for the subnet and rely on Azure-assigned SNAT addresses.