Azure Private Links, Private Endpoints, and Service Endpoints are all features in Microsoft Azure that allow you to secure your network traffic to Azure services.
Azure Private Link Service: Azure Private Link Service provides a way to expose your services to consumers securely. The Link service refers to your own service that is behind the load balancers. This enables the consumers to create a Private link to connect to your service via Azure Private Link over a private and secure network.
Private Endpoints: Private Endpoints are a type of Azure Private Link that allows you to access a specific Azure service over a private network connection. A private endpoint provides a private IP address for a resource, and traffic to that resource is redirected to the private endpoint.
Service Endpoints: Service Endpoints are a feature of Azure Virtual Network (VNet) that extend the network of an Azure VNet to a specific Azure service. Service Endpoints allow you to secure network traffic to Azure services over a private network connection, providing enhanced security and privacy.
The below table provides you with the main differences. The major difference among all of them is How the traffic is traversing to reach the service.
| Azure Private Endpoints | Azure Private Link Service | Azure Service Endpoints |
| When using Endpoints for a PaaS Service, Azure creates a NIC in your VNet, so you can access the service as if it is in your VNet | When using Link Service (Can be another tenant/subscription), you can expose your service to your consumers and the consumer creates an endpoint within his VNet. | When using the Service Endpoints, the traffic will reach the PaaS service over the Azure backbone network. |
| The traffic will not move out of the VNet. | Since Azure creates a NIC in consumer VNet, the traffic will not move out of the VNet. | The traffic leaves your VNet and reaches the service via Azure Network instead of the Internet. |
| Supports Network Policies such as NSGs, and UDRs. | Supports when your services are exposed via Standard Load Balancer | You can control traffic via network rules at the service level. |
Please refer to the below URLs for the list of services that support the above:
Azure Private Endpoints: Private-link-resource
Azure Service Endpoints: Service Endpoint Supported List
In summary, Azure Private Links provide a secure and scalable way to access Azure services over a private network connection, while Private Endpoints and Service Endpoints allow you to secure network traffic to specific Azure services over a private network connection. The choice between these options depends on your specific requirements, but they all provide enhanced security and privacy for your network traffic to Azure services.
