Skip to main content
Azure File Sync in proxied environments
  1. Posts/

Azure File Sync in proxied environments

·235 words·2 mins
Christoph Petersen
Author
Christoph Petersen

Azure File Sync lets you tier data from on-premises systems to a cloud share based on Azure File. Local nodes can act as hot-caches, caching data based on access and modification patterns. Azure File Sync supports multi-master sync so that you can deploy those caches to multiple offices and replicate data across your organization.

Many organizations employ proxies to control egress traffic to the internet. Azure File Sync is pretty easy from a networking point of view as all connections are tunneled through HTTPS.

Still if you use proxies this needs to be taken into consideration and there is a (big) caveat. Although Azure File Sync supports application specific proxy settings (which can be set during setup of any node or later through PowerShell) this is not applied to all connections and connections that are not proxy aware fail silently.

TCPView showing some non-proxied connections

This leads to a multitude of problems. Initial configuration can’t be completed. Warnings are logged to the Event Log and the state of the Sync Group in the Azure Portal is stuck in pending.

Server Endpoint in pending state due to network connection issues
Warning due to network time outs in Windows Event Log

In order to ensure that Azure File Sync is working correctly the proxy needs to be set server-wide. Follow the instructions from the Azure File Sync deployment documentation and make sure to follow the instructions to set the machine-wide proxy.

Once the steps have been completed all connections are going through the proxy and Azure File Sync starts working as intended.

Functioning server endpoint in Sync Group

Related

Install Azure PowerShell Cmdlets through proxy

·232 words·2 mins
Photo by rawpixel on Unsplash When setting up Azure File Sync one of the requirements is to have the Azure PowerShell Cmdlets (AzureRM) installed. Many customers have proxies deployed which control internet egress. Many of these also use authentication to secure internet access.

Merge Azure Backup reporting data into one storage account using Logic Apps

·709 words·4 mins
When using Azure Backup to manage (geo-)distributed backups across a company you may find that the Azure Backup Reports with Power BI is limited to a single storage account. Unfortunately the reporting telemetry coming from Azure Backup needs to be written to a storage account that is in the same region as the Recovery Services Vault.