Azure: Allowing Windows Server to activate via KMS through Azure Firewall

 At current client we have an Azure Firewall installed. And only outbound traffic on ports 80 and 443 is allowed. Today we found that Windows Servers do not activate (we're buying the licenses per Windows Server). 

The reason for this is that the VMs can't reach the KMS server for Azure Global cloud:

Azure Global KMS: kms.core.windows.net  - IP: 23.102.135.246 on port 1688. See here for more info. 

(I found a general activation troubleshooting guide here where they recommend testing with PsPing. I didn't get around to trying that, but it might be useful.)

I tried adding a network rule in the Azure Firewall using the FQDN, kms.core.windows.net. That failed.

But adding a rule using the IP address in stead worked fine (and that looks to be 'allowed' as well by MS).

The following rule was added in Azure Firewall via PowerShell:

 # Allow VMs to reach kms.core.windows.net for Windows Server activation

 $NetRule2 = New-AzFirewallNetworkRule -Name "allow-kms" -Protocol TCP,UDP -SourceAddress `

  "10.1.1.0/24", `

  "10.1.2.0/24" `

 -DestinationAddress "23.102.135.246" -DestinationPort "1688"

And remember to add the rule variable as well to the New-AzFirewallNetworkRuleCollection cmdlet:

$NetRuleCollection = New-AzFirewallNetworkRuleCollection -Name 'fw-rule-collection' -Priority 200 `

   -Rule $NetRule1,$NetRule2 -ActionType "Allow"

When done, I RDP'ed to a VM and went to activation. It wasn't activated. I clicked on troubleshoot and the VM activated. Likely after a while all VMs will activate automatically.