You may have read or heard about the recent announcement from Microsoft that default outbound access for VMs in Azure will be retired on 30th September 2025, and that you will need to use explicit outbound connectivity methods such as Azure NAT Gateway, Azure Load Balancer outbound rules, or a directly attached Azure public IP address.
Yes, when you deploy a virtual machine in Azure, outbound internet connectivity is enabled by default allowing you to browse the Internet. This default configuration is changing.
What happens to my Virtual Machines default outbound connectivity if I don’t make this change?
According to the announcement your existing VMs that use default outbound access will continue to work after this retirement, however, Microsoft strongly recommend transitioning to an explicit outbound method.
I posted the announcement on LinkedIn and this retirement notice was welcomed by techies. Here are a few comments. Let me know what you think in the comments section below,
Now, to the main reason why I posted this announcement. If you’re wondering what is Azure NAT Gateway, continue to the next paragraph.
What is Azure NAT Gateway?
One of the recommended methods mentioned to allow outbound Internet connectivity for your VMs is to use Azure NAT Gateway, but what is this service. If you wish to learn more about Azure NAT Gateway, check out my post Azure NAT Gateway Explained
