Allow access to Azure Event Hubs namespaces from specific virtual networks

Azure Event Hubs provides a secure and scalable messaging platform for cloud-based solutions. By integrating Event Hubs with Azure Virtual Network service endpoints, you can enhance security by isolating messaging services from public internet access. This guide explains how to configure virtual network rules, enable private communication between workloads, and implement advanced security scenarios for your Event Hubs namespaces. Whether you're using the Azure portal, Resource Manager templates, CLI, or PowerShell, this article provides step-by-step instructions to help you securely bind Event Hubs to virtual networks.

Overview

The integration of Event Hubs with Virtual Network service endpoints enables secure access to messaging capabilities from workloads such as virtual machines that are bound to virtual networks, with the network traffic path being secured on both ends.

Once configured to bind to at least one virtual network subnet service endpoint, the respective Event Hubs namespace accepts traffic only from authorized subnets in virtual networks. From the virtual network perspective, binding an Event Hubs namespace to a service endpoint creates an isolated networking tunnel from the virtual network subnet to the messaging service.

The result is a private and isolated relationship between the workloads bound to the subnet and the respective Event Hubs namespace, even though the observable network address of the messaging service endpoint is in a public IP range. There's an exception to this behavior. By default, enabling a service endpoint activates the denyall rule in the IP firewall associated with the virtual network. You can add specific IP addresses in the IP firewall to enable access to the Event Hubs public endpoint.

Important points

• This feature isn't supported in the basic tier.
• Enabling virtual networks for your Event Hubs namespace blocks incoming requests by default unless requests originate from a service operating from allowed virtual networks. Blocked requests include the requests from other Azure services, the Azure portal, logging and metrics services, and so on. As an exception, you can allow access to Event Hubs resources from certain trusted services even when virtual networks are enabled. For a list of trusted services, see Trusted services.
• Specify at least one IP rule or virtual network rule for the namespace to allow traffic only from the specified IP addresses or subnet of a virtual network. If there are no IP and virtual network rules, the namespace is accessible over the public internet (using the access key).

Advanced security scenarios enabled by virtual network integration

Solutions that require tight and compartmentalized security, and where virtual network subnets provide the segmentation between the compartmentalized services, still need communication paths between services residing in those compartments.

Any immediate IP route between the compartments, including those carrying HTTPS over TCP/IP, carries the risk of exploitation of vulnerabilities from the network layer on up. Messaging services provide insulated communication paths, where messages are even written to disk as they transition between parties. Workloads in two distinct virtual networks that are both bound to the same Event Hubs instance can communicate efficiently and reliably via messages, while the respective network isolation boundary integrity is preserved.

This behavior means your security-sensitive cloud solutions gain access to Azure's reliable, scalable asynchronous messaging capabilities. Messaging creates communication paths between secure solution compartments that are inherently more secure than peer-to-peer communication modes, including HTTPS and other TLS-secured protocols.

Bind Event Hubs to virtual networks

Virtual network rules are the firewall security feature that controls whether your Azure Event Hubs namespace accepts connections from a particular virtual network subnet.

Binding an Event Hubs namespace to a virtual network involves two steps:

1. Create a virtual network service endpoint on a virtual network's subnet and enable it for Microsoft.EventHub. See the service endpoint overview for details.
2. Bind the Event Hubs namespace to the service endpoint using a virtual network rule.

The virtual network rule is an association of the Event Hubs namespace with a virtual network subnet. While the rule exists, all workloads bound to the subnet are granted access to the Event Hubs namespace. Event Hubs doesn't establish outbound connections, doesn't need access, and isn't granted access to your subnet when you enable this rule.

Use Azure portal

When creating a namespace, you can choose between:

• Public access: Allows access from all networks.
• Private access: Restricts access to private endpoints only.

After creating the namespace, you can further refine access by specifying IP addresses or virtual networks using network service endpoints.

Configure public access when creating a namespace

To enable public access, select Public access on the Networking page in the namespace creation wizard.

After creating the namespace, select Networking from the left menu of the Service Bus Namespace page. The All Networks option is selected by default. You can select Selected Networks to allow access from specific IP addresses or virtual networks. The next section provides you details on specifying the networks from which the access is allowed.

Configure selected networks for an existing namespace

This section shows you how to use Azure portal to add a virtual network service endpoint. To limit access, you need to integrate the virtual network service endpoint for this Event Hubs namespace.

1. Navigate to your Event Hubs namespace in the Azure portal.

2. Select Networking under Settings on the left menu.

3. On the Networking page, for Public network access, you can set one of the three following options. Choose Selected networks option to allow access only from specific virtual networks.

   Here are more details about options available in the Public network access page:

   • Disabled. This option disables any public access to the namespace. The namespace is accessible only through private endpoints.

   • Selected networks. This option enables public access to the namespace using an access key from selected networks.

     Important

     If you choose Selected networks, add at least one IP firewall rule or a virtual network that can access your namespace. Choose Disabled if you want to restrict all traffic to this namespace over private endpoints only.

   • All networks (default). This option enables public access from all networks using an access key. If you select the All networks option, the event hub accepts connections from any IP address (using the access key). This setting is equivalent to a rule that accepts the 0.0.0.0/0 IP address range.

4. To restrict access to specific networks, choose the Selected Networks option at the top of the page if it isn't already selected.

5. In the Virtual networks section of the page, select +Add existing virtual network*. Select + Create new virtual network if you want to create a new virtual network.

   

   Important

   If you choose Selected networks, add at least one IP firewall rule or a virtual network that can access your namespace. Choose Disabled if you want to restrict all traffic to this namespace over private endpoints only.

6. Select the virtual network from the list of virtual networks, and then pick the subnet. You have to enable the service endpoint before adding the virtual network to the list. If the service endpoint isn't enabled, the portal prompts you to enable it.

   

7. You see a success message after enabling the service endpoint for the subnet for Microsoft.EventHub. Select Add at the bottom of the page to add the network.

   

   Note

   If you're unable to enable the service endpoint, you can ignore the missing virtual network service endpoint using the Resource Manager template. This functionality isn't available on the portal.

8. Specify whether you want to allow trusted Microsoft services to bypass this firewall. See Trusted Microsoft services for details.

9. Select Save on the toolbar to save the settings. Wait a few minutes for the confirmation to appear in the portal notifications.

   

   Note

   To restrict access to specific IP addresses or ranges, see Allow access from specific IP addresses or ranges.

   Note

   To delete a Virtual Network rule, first remove any Azure Resource Manager delete lock on the Virtual Network.

Trusted Microsoft services

When you enable the Allow trusted Microsoft services to bypass this firewall setting, the following services within the same tenant are granted access to your Event Hubs resources.

The other trusted services for Azure Event Hubs can be found below:

• Azure Arc
• Azure Kubernetes
• Azure Machine Learning
• Microsoft Purview

Use Resource Manager template

This sample Resource Manager template adds a virtual network rule to an existing Event Hubs namespace. It specifies the ID of a subnet in a virtual network for the network rule.

The ID is a fully qualified Resource Manager path for the virtual network subnet. For example: /subscriptions/{id}/resourceGroups/{rg}/providers/Microsoft.Network/virtualNetworks/{vnet}/subnets/default.

When adding virtual network or firewall rules, set the value of defaultAction to Deny.

{
    "$schema": "https://schema.management.azure.com/schemas/2015-01-01/deploymentTemplate.json#",
    "contentVersion": "1.0.0.0",
    "parameters": {
      "eventhubNamespaceName": {
        "type": "string",
        "metadata": {
          "description": "Name of the Event Hubs namespace"
        }
      },
      "virtualNetworkName": {
        "type": "string",
        "metadata": {
          "description": "Name of the Virtual Network Rule"
        }
      },
      "subnetName": {
        "type": "string",
        "metadata": {
          "description": "Name of the Virtual Network Sub Net"
        }
      },
      "location": {
        "type": "string",
        "metadata": {
          "description": "Location for Namespace"
        }
      }
    },
    "variables": {
      "namespaceNetworkRuleSetName": "[concat(parameters('eventhubNamespaceName'), concat('/', 'default'))]",
      "subNetId": "[resourceId('Microsoft.Network/virtualNetworks/subnets/', parameters('virtualNetworkName'), parameters('subnetName'))]"
    },
    "resources": [
      {
        "apiVersion": "2018-01-01-preview",
        "name": "[parameters('eventhubNamespaceName')]",
        "type": "Microsoft.EventHub/namespaces",
        "location": "[parameters('location')]",
        "sku": {
          "name": "Standard",
          "tier": "Standard"
        },
        "properties": { }
      },
      {
        "apiVersion": "2017-09-01",
        "name": "[parameters('virtualNetworkName')]",
        "location": "[parameters('location')]",
        "type": "Microsoft.Network/virtualNetworks",
        "properties": {
          "addressSpace": {
            "addressPrefixes": [
              "10.0.0.0/23"
            ]
          },
          "subnets": [
            {
              "name": "[parameters('subnetName')]",
              "properties": {
                "addressPrefix": "10.0.0.0/23",
                "serviceEndpoints": [
                  {
                    "service": "Microsoft.EventHub"
                  }
                ]
              }
            }
          ]
        }
      },
      {
        "apiVersion": "2018-01-01-preview",
        "name": "[variables('namespaceNetworkRuleSetName')]",
        "type": "Microsoft.EventHub/namespaces/networkruleset",
        "dependsOn": [
          "[concat('Microsoft.EventHub/namespaces/', parameters('eventhubNamespaceName'))]"
        ],
        "properties": {
          "publicNetworkAccess": "Enabled",
          "defaultAction": "Deny",
          "virtualNetworkRules": 
          [
            {
              "subnet": {
                "id": "[variables('subNetId')]"
              },
              "ignoreMissingVnetServiceEndpoint": false
            }
          ],
          "ipRules":[],
          "trustedServiceAccessEnabled": false
        }
      }
    ],
    "outputs": { }
  }

To deploy the template, follow the instructions for Azure Resource Manager.

Use Azure CLI

Use the az eventhubs namespace network-rule-set add, list, update, and remove commands to manage virtual network rules for a Service Bus namespace.

Use Azure PowerShell

Use the following Azure PowerShell commands to add, list, update, and delete network rules for a Service Bus namespace.

• Add-AzEventHubVirtualNetworkRule to add a virtual network rule.
• Use New-AzEventHubVirtualNetworkRuleConfig and Set-AzEventHubNetworkRuleSet together to add a virtual network rule.
• Remove-AzEventHubVirtualNetworkRule to remove a virtual network rule.

Default action and public network access

REST API

The default value of the defaultAction property is Deny for API version 2021-01-01-preview and earlier. However, the deny rule isn't enforced unless IP filters or virtual network rules are set. That is, if you didn't have any IP filters or virtual network rules, it's treated as Allow.

Starting with API version 2021-06-01-preview, the default value of the defaultAction property is Allow to accurately reflect the service-side enforcement. If the default action is set to Deny, IP filters and virtual network rules are enforced. If the default action is set to Allow, IP filters and virtual network rules aren't enforced. The service remembers the rules when you turn them off and then back on again.

The API version 2021-06-01-preview onwards also introduces a new property named publicNetworkAccess. If it's set to Disabled, operations are restricted to private links only. If it's set to Enabled, operations are allowed over the public internet.

For more information about these properties, see Create or Update Network Rule Set and Create or Update Private Endpoint Connections.

Azure portal

The Azure portal always uses the latest API version to get and set properties. If you had previously configured your namespace using 2021-01-01-preview and earlier with defaultAction set to Deny, and specified zero IP filters and virtual network rules, the portal would have previously checked Selected Networks on the Networking page of your namespace. Now, it checks the All networks option.

Next steps

Explore more about virtual networks:

• Azure virtual network service endpoints
• Azure Event Hubs IP filtering

Use these resources to deepen your understanding and implement secure networking for Event Hubs.