Microsoft Azure Networking (Part-1)

Hello Everyone :)

As we all know Microsoft Azure is growing day by day and expanding its length and breadth. So, lets start with few basic series of blogs which explains more on the terminology of the individual resource in most IAAS Section of Azure which are Networking, Compute, etc.

Today let's understand concepts and resources which are under Azure Networking.

When you say Azure networking you typically deal with below resources:

  1. Azure Traffic Manager
  2. Azure Load Balancer
  3. Azure Application Gateway
  4. Static IP Reservations
  5. Network Security Group
  6. User Defined Routes

Lets dig down into individual resource and see why anyone should use the Resource, Pros and Cons, and finally few examples of the resource in real world.

Traffic Manager

  1. This resource is used for DNS routing of requests across HTTP & HTTPs endpoints.
  2. Standard or Higher WebApps
  3. Cloud Services (Classic & ARM)
  4. Any Azure service with Public endpoint
  5. Internet - facing external resources(Including Azure Storage which default has public endpoint, SQL databases)
  6. Routes typically happen at DNS lookup level
  7. Min on 30 secs TTL(Time To Live) time for most DNS Servers.

Traffic Manager has 3 routing options:

  1. Performance: Least latent endpoint to request.
  2. Priority: Routes to a primary endpoint and send traffic to a backup endpoint if the primary goes offline.
  3. Weighted: Distributes requests among endpoints based on user-supplied weighting values.

Pros:

  1. Automatic - based on whatever rule you apply & also endpoint health.
  2. Easy to configure.
  3. Allows you to nest routing methods. (Eg: Priority @ Child Tier and Performance @ Parent Tier)
  4. Spans between networks(Share workloads between cloud resources and On-Prem resources)
  5. Can also be used for Non-Azure Services.
  6. Useful for avoiding extending downtime.
  7. Facilitates global distribution of your workloads with a single URL(Geographical targeting).

Cons:

  1. 30 secs or longer TTL(not instantaneous) => Mostly DNS TTL >= 5 mins
  2. Requires a public IP address on each endpoint -> Only supports Internet - facing endpoints.
  3. Requires HTTP or HTTPS service on each endpoint for health probes.
  4. Requires Standard or higher level web Apps.

Examples:

  1. Split up load on multiple Web Apps.
  2. Provides a single URL for globally distributed Application.
  3. Enable temporary routing to a backup endpoint as maintenance is performed on the primary endpoint.
  4. Combine Azure & External resources into single addressable entity(Ex: On-Premises SQL Server / Azure SQL Server).
  5. Ensure uptime across third-party/external services.

Thanks for reading.. :) Keep following for Part - 2

Raghuram Korukonda

Most of my time I spent working on Azure and contributing to Microsoft Azure and other Open Source Communities. I am passionate about Technology and helping people in embracing it to the fullest.

Hyderabad, India

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