Earlier this year we were able to bring VNET peering to Azure Government, with all of the same functions as commercial Azure. We are aware that government agencies often have complex networking requirements.  This means that VNET peering is a key ask from our customers and are glad to provide this solution for our customers.  

VNET peering is a mechanism that connects two virtual networks (VNETs) in the same region through the Azure backbone network. Once peered, the two virtual networks appear as one for all connectivity purposes. They are still managed as separate resources, but virtual machines in these virtual networks can communicate with each other directly by using private IP addresses.

The traffic between virtual machines in the peered virtual networks is routed through the Azure infrastructure much like traffic is routed between VMs in the same virtual network. Some of the benefits of using VNET peering include:  

• A low-latency, high-bandwidth connection between resources in different virtual networks. 
• The ability to use resources such as network appliances and VPN gateways as transit points in a peered VNET. 
• The ability to connect a virtual network that uses the Azure Resource Manager model to a virtual network that uses the classic deployment model and enable full connectivity between resources in these virtual networks. 

You can check out the VNET Peering public documentation here. 

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