Create and Assign a Public IP Address Prefix in Azure

Public IP addresses are fundamental to how cloud resources communicate with the internet, but managing them individually across a growing infrastructure becomes operationally complex. Azure Public IP Address Prefixes solve this by reserving a contiguous block of standard SKU public IP addresses, guaranteeing that all addresses in the range are sequential and predictable. This is especially valuable for organizations that need to allowlist outbound IPs in downstream firewalls or partner systems. Instead of maintaining a constantly changing list of individual addresses, teams can allowlist an entire CIDR range. Public IP prefixes also play a critical role in scaling outbound SNAT connections when paired with NAT Gateways, where each IP provides up to 64,512 ephemeral ports for outbound connectivity.

In this lab, you will create a public IP address prefix to reserve a contiguous range of public IPs, create individual public IP addresses derived from that prefix, associate a prefix-derived IP with a NAT Gateway to enable predictable outbound connectivity for a virtual network, and verify the end-to-end configuration. This lab covers networking objectives relevant to the AZ-104 and AZ-700 certification exams.

Objectives

By completing this beginner level lab, you will be able to:

• Create a public IP address prefix to reserve a contiguous block of standard SKU public IP addresses
• Create individual public IP addresses from an existing public IP address prefix
• Configure a NAT Gateway with a prefix-derived public IP address for predictable outbound connectivity
• Associate the NAT Gateway with a virtual network subnet to enable outbound SNAT
• Verify that outbound traffic from subnet resources uses an IP address from the reserved prefix range

Who is this lab for?

This lab is designed for:

• Cloud engineers preparing for AZ-104 or AZ-700 certification exams who want hands-on experience with public IP address management at scale
• Azure administrators who need to implement predictable outbound IP ranges for firewall allowlisting

Basic familiarity with the Azure Portal and core networking concepts (IP addresses, subnets, VNets) is recommended.