private endpoint service endpoint private link and public endpoint

Question

hi friends I am confused with private endpoint service endpoint private link and public endpoint why and when to use this what scenario.please give a practical example while explaining

Answer 1

Hello @Anshal,

<In addition to Sam Cogan's answer>

Here are a few scenarios for the use cases:

Scenario 1: If you want to access your resources outside your Vnet, you can use public endpoints. An example use case: An azure storage account contain files that need to be accessible via the internet. In this case, a public endpoint can be created to download the files directly from the internet.

Scenario 2: If you want to access your resources within your Vnet, you can use private endpoints. An example use case: An azure storage account contains sensitive data to be accessible within your Vnet. In this case, you can use a private endpoint to ensure that traffic to the storage account stays within the Azure network and is not exposed to the public internet.

Scenario 3: Azure Service Endpoints enable private connectivity to Azure services from within a virtual network. An example use case: You have a scenario, where an application running on a virtual machine needs to access an Azure Storage account. By creating a service endpoint, traffic to the storage account is restricted to the virtual network. So you are keeping the data within the virtual network, rather than going over the internet.

Scenario 4: An Azure private link, is a way to access Azure PaaS services (like Azure SQL, Cosmos DB, etc.) over private endpoints in VNet, eliminating exposure to the public internet. An example use case: use Azure Cosmos DB to store data and wants to access it over a private endpoint within the virtual network. This will improve security by eliminating exposure to the public internet.

Video tutorial: Public endpoints, Private endpoints and Service endpoints.
Private link deep dive

Please check the below reference documents:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/private-link/private-link-overview

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/private-link/private-endpoint-overview

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-sql/managed-instance/public-endpoint-configure?view=azuresql

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-network/virtual-network-service-endpoints-overview

I hope this helps. Please let us know if you need any further clarification.

Answer 2

All of these services define how a resources is configured to be accessed over the network:

• Public endpoints have a public IP address and are network accessible to anyone using the internet (obviously credentials are still required)
• Service Endpoints allow you to apply a firewall to the resource to restrict which public IP addresses can be used to access this service, but the service still has a public IP
• Private Endpoints (sometimes referred to as private link) allow you to attach a resource to a virtual network and have a private IP address for accessing that service

Some services (Blob, SQL) allow you to use both Private Endpoints and Service Endpoints at the same time, so you can allow traffic over a private IP for network resources at the same time as allowing selected public IPs to access the public IP of the service. Some other services will only support one or the other and will turn off service endpoints when you enable private endpoints.