Easy ways to perform the Azure Firewall upgrade or downgrade?

Keeping your Azure Firewall with the correct SKU is vital to maintaining the security and stability of your cloud infrastructure. You must follow precise steps to ensure peak performance and optimization for seamless and efficient firewall upgrades and downgrades. To help you with this, I have created a guide outlining the steps for upgrading or downgrading your Azure Firewall.

Background

Previously, migrating Azure Firewall involved manual steps, often resulting in errors and inefficiencies. However, the latest feature update has made it possible to upgrade or downgrade the firewall directly without any manual intervention. This new feature streamlines the migration process and reduces the likelihood of errors.

Upgrading a firewall can be complex and time-consuming, especially in large and complex environments. It requires careful planning, testing, and execution to ensure the upgrade process goes smoothly and does not disrupt the network.
Fortunately, the new upgrade feature in Azure Firewall simplifies the process by reducing the time and effort required to upgrade the firewall. Instead of going through a lengthy and complex process, administrators can now upgrade the firewall with just a click of a button.

This new feature saves time and effort, ensuring a smooth upgrade process without causing network disruptions. Additionally, the new upgrade feature guarantees that the firewall remains operational and services remain uninterrupted while upgrading or downgrading. This assures companies of reduced cybersecurity threats and other security breaches during Azure Firewall service downtime.

Please note: This new upgrade/downgrade capability doesn’t support the Azure Firewall Basic SKU.

Upgrade

During the upgrade process, users can choose the policy associated with the upgraded Premium SKU. They can either use an existing Premium Policy or their existing Standard Policy. If they choose the latter, the system will automatically duplicate and upgrade the policy to the Premium Policy level and attach it to the newly created Premium Firewall. This allows customers to efficiently utilize their existing Standard policy without manually creating a new one.

The automated feature streamlines upgrading by taking care of everything for you. It seamlessly upgrades each instance of Azure firewall, one after the other, ensuring that your network traffic remains unaffected. This ensures that your business can operate smoothly during the upgrade process. Moreover, the feature allows you to effortlessly upgrade your standard policy to a premium one, matching your upgraded Premium SKU. Follow the guidelines below to upgrade your Azure Firewall and protect your cloud environment.

• Navigate to the Azure Firewall resource in the Azure portal. 
• Once you reach the overview section, you will see a “Change SKU” button that you need to click to upgrade your firewall.

• After clicking the button, a prompt will appear asking you to select the SKU type for your firewall upgrade.
• Next, you must choose the Firewall policy you want to attach to your upgraded firewall. 
• Finally, click the Upgrade button, and Azure Firewall will automatically upgrade to the Premium SKU.

The upgrade of Azure Firewall to the Premium SKU will take place soon.

Downgrade

Suppose you want to downgrade the Premium SKU firewall but are still using the Premium firewall policy. Knowing that the firewall policy won’t be downgraded simultaneously is essential. To complete the downgrade successfully, you should manually change the firewall policy to the standard tier before starting the downgrade process. This will make sure that the process goes smoothly without any issues.

Please refer to the screenshot below, which shows the downgrade operation with Premium firewall policy is not permitted.

Select the Premium SKU Firewall, and under firewall policy, click on change, choose the standard policy from the existing policies and save.

After a few mins, the policy SKU will be changed, and we will be ready to perform the downgrade of the Firewall SKU. Follow the guidelines below to downgrade your Azure Firewall:

• Navigate to the Azure Firewall resource in the Azure portal. 
• Once you reach the overview section, you will see a “Change SKU” button that you need to click to downgrade your firewall.
• After clicking the button, you will be prompted to select the SKU type to which you want to downgrade your firewall. 
• Next, you must choose the Firewall policy you want to attach to your downgraded firewall. 
• Finally, click the Downgrade button, and Azure Firewall will automatically downgrade to the Standard SKU.

After a few minutes, the Azure Firewall will be changed to a standard SKU.

Conclusion

The Azure Firewall Upgrade or Downgrade feature is a valuable addition to the capabilities of the Azure Firewall. It simplifies the process of upgrading, improves security, reduces downtime, and saves time. This new feature makes upgrading the Azure Firewall much more straightforward and hassle-free.

Administrators can save time and effort by spending less on planning and executing upgrades and instead focus on other critical tasks, such as enhancing network security and performance. This can lead to cost savings for organizations as administrators can allocate their time and resources more effectively to other vital tasks, knowing that upgrades can be accomplished more efficiently.

This feature helps organizations save on operational expenses by reducing the time and effort required for upgrades and downgrades. This blog post has provided valuable insights into the new capability of Azure Firewall.