Firewall requirements for Azure Stack HCI

Applies to: Azure Stack HCI, versions 21H2 and 20H2

This topic provides guidance on how to configure firewalls for the Azure Stack HCI operating system. It includes connectivity requirements and recommendations, and explains how service tags group IP addresses in Microsoft Azure that the operating system needs to access. The topic also provides steps to update Microsoft Defender Firewall, and information on how to set up a proxy server.

Connectivity requirements and recommendations

Opening port 443 for outbound network traffic on your organization's firewall meets the connectivity requirements for the operating system to connect with Azure and Microsoft Update. If your outbound firewall is restricted, then we recommend including the URLs and ports described in the Connectivity recommendations allowlist section of this topic.

Azure connectivity requirements

Azure Stack HCI needs to periodically connect to Azure. Access is limited to only:

• Well-known Azure IPs
• Outbound direction
• Port 443 (HTTPS)

This topic describes how to optionally use a highly locked-down firewall configuration to block all traffic to all destinations except those included on your allowlist.

As shown in the following diagram, Azure Stack HCI accesses Azure using more than one firewall potentially.

Microsoft Update connectivity requirements

If there is a corporate firewall between the operating system and the internet, you might have to configure that firewall to ensure the operating system can obtain updates. To obtain updates from Microsoft Update, the operating system uses port 443 for the HTTPS protocol. Although most corporate firewalls allow this type of traffic, some companies restrict internet access due to their security policies. If your company restricts access, you'll need to obtain authorization to allow internet access to the following URLs:

• http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com
• http://*.windowsupdate.microsoft.com
• https://*.windowsupdate.microsoft.com
• http://*.update.microsoft.com
• https://*.update.microsoft.com
• http://*.windowsupdate.com
• http://download.windowsupdate.com
• https://download.microsoft.com
• http://*.download.windowsupdate.com
• http://wustat.windows.com
• http://ntservicepack.microsoft.com
• http://go.microsoft.com
• http://dl.delivery.mp.microsoft.com
• https://dl.delivery.mp.microsoft.com

Network firewall rules and port requirements

Ensure that the proper network ports are open between all server nodes both within a site and between sites (for stretched clusters). You'll need appropriate firewall rules to allow ICMP, SMB (port 445, plus port 5445 for SMB Direct if using iWARP RDMA), and WS-MAN (port 5985) bi-directional traffic between all servers in the cluster.

When using the Cluster Creation wizard in Windows Admin Center to create the cluster, the wizard automatically opens the appropriate firewall ports on each server in the cluster for Failover Clustering, Hyper-V, and Storage Replica. If you're using a different firewall on each server, open the ports in the following sections:

Windows Admin Center

Ensure that the following firewall rules are configured in your on-premises firewall for Windows Admin Center.

Failover Clustering

Ensure that the following firewall rules are configured in your on-premises firewall for Failover Clustering.

Hyper-V

Ensure that the following firewall rules are configured in your on-premises firewall for Hyper-V.

Storage Replica (stretched cluster)

Ensure that the following firewall rules are configured in your on-premises firewall for Storage Replica (stretched cluster).

Connectivity recommendations

If your outbound firewall is restricted, then we recommend adding the following URLs and ports in this section to your allowlist.

For more information about these connectivity recommendations and others, see the following resources:

• Allow the Azure portal URLs on your firewall or proxy server
• Azure Arc networking configuration
• PowerShell Gallery URLs to install components such a NuGet and others
• For access to the Azure Kubernetes Service, Google APIs, Helm, and more, see Azure Kubernetes Service on Azure Stack HCI network port and URL requirements

Working with service tags

A service tag represents a group of IP addresses from a given Azure service. Microsoft manages the IP addresses included in the service tag, and automatically updates the service tag as IP addresses change to keep updates to a minimum. To learn more, see Virtual network service tags.

Required endpoint daily access (after Azure registration)

Azure maintains well-known IP addresses for Azure services that are organized using service tags. Azure publishes a weekly JSON file of all the IP addresses for every service. The IP addresses don’t change often, but they do change a few times per year. The following table shows the service tag endpoints that the operating system needs to access.

Update Microsoft Defender Firewall

This section shows how to configure Microsoft Defender Firewall to allow IP addresses associated with a service tag to connect with the operating system:

1. Download the JSON file from the following resource to the target computer running the operating system: Azure IP Ranges and Service Tags – Public Cloud.

2. Use the following PowerShell command to open the JSON file:

   $json = Get-Content -Path .\ServiceTags_Public_20201012.json | ConvertFrom-Json
   

3. Get the list of IP address ranges for a given service tag, such as the “AzureResourceManager” service tag:

   $IpList = ($json.values | where Name -Eq "AzureResourceManager").properties.addressPrefixes
   

4. Import the list of IP addresses to your external corporate firewall, if you're using an allowlist with it.

5. Create a firewall rule for each server in the cluster to allow outbound 443 (HTTPS) traffic to the list of IP address ranges:

   New-NetFirewallRule -DisplayName "Allow Azure Resource Manager" -RemoteAddress $IpList -Direction Outbound -LocalPort 443 -Protocol TCP -Action Allow -Profile Any -Enabled True
   

Additional endpoint for one-time Azure registration

During the Azure registration process, when you run either Register-AzStackHCI or use Windows Admin Center, the cmdlet tries to contact the PowerShell Gallery to verify that you have the latest version of required PowerShell modules, such as Az and AzureAD.

Although the PowerShell Gallery is hosted on Azure, currently there isn't a service tag for it. If you can't run the Register-AzStackHCI cmdlet from a server node because of no internet access, we recommend downloading the modules to your management computer, and then manually transferring them to the server node where you want to run the cmdlet.

Set up a proxy server

This section shows how to set up a proxy server for your cluster.

Install the WinInetProxy module to run the commands in this section. For information about the module and how to install it, see PowerShell Gallery | WinInetProxy 0.1.0.

To set up a proxy server for Azure Stack HCI, run the following PowerShell command as an administrator on each server in the cluster:

Set-WinInetProxy -ProxySettingsPerUser 0 -ProxyServer webproxy1.com:9090

Use the ProxySettingsPerUser 0 flag to make the proxy configuration server-wide instead of per user, which is the default.

To remove the proxy configuration, run the PowerShell command Set-WinInetProxy without arguments.

Next steps

For more information, see also:

• The Windows Firewall and WinRM 2.0 ports section of Installation and configuration for Windows Remote Management