Azure Load Balancer—Outbound Rules for Standard Load Balance GA

Outbound Rules for Standard Load Balancer is now generally available. 

This new ability allows you to declare which public IP or public IP prefix should be used for outbound connectivity from your virtual network, and how outbound network address translations should be scaled and tuned.

·        Simplifies outbound scenarios— This new ability explicitly declares outbound network address translations using public IP addresses, public IP prefixes, or both.  Outbound NAT is pool-based and can be defined without corresponding inbound load balancing rules or define outbound connectivity to use a different IP address than used for inbound. 

·        Manage outbound scale—Explicitly define the quantity of public IP addresses or the size of public IP prefix used for outbound connections. Additionally, the allocation of SNAT ports can be fine-tuned to maximize scale beyond the default allocations provided by Azure Load Balancer. 

·        Control idle timeout and expose TCP connection closure—Along with scale and manageability,  you can configure the outbound idle timeout from 4 to 66 minutes. In addition, enable the sending of bidirectional TCP resets at the time a connection reaches idle timeout to expose the TCP connection closure to applications. 

Outbound Rules can be managed through Resource Manager templates, CLI, and PowerShell.  Outbound rules are charged as part of load balancing rules.

For more information, including pricing details, please visit the Azure Load Balancer Outbound Rules page.