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Azure App Traffic Routing

An Azure Decision Tree provides a flowchart to evaluate different options based on specific requirements.

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Azure App Routing decision tree

Azure Services

Azure Front Door

Layer 7 routing — routes HTTP/HTTPS traffic globally using:

  • Latency-Based: Directs traffic to the fastest backend for users.
  • Path-Based: Routes requests to specific backends based on the URL path.
  • Protocol-Based: Manages traffic for HTTP/HTTPS protocols.
  • WAF Rules: Routing decisions influenced by security policies.

Azure Traffic Manager

DNS-based routing — routes traffic globally at the DNS level:

  • Priority: Routes traffic to the primary endpoint unless it's unhealthy.
  • Performance: Directs users to the closest endpoint with the lowest latency.
  • Geographic: Routes traffic based on the user's location.
  • Weighted: Allocates traffic to endpoints based on assigned weights.

Azure Application Gateway

Layer 7 routing — manages HTTP/HTTPS traffic regionally:

  • URL-Based: Routes traffic based on specific URL paths.
  • Host-Based: Directs traffic based on the host header in HTTP requests.
  • Cookie Affinity: Routes requests from the same user to the same backend.
  • SSL Offloading: Handles encryption/decryption to reduce server load.

Azure Load Balancer

Layer 4 routing — distributes TCP/UDP traffic within a region:

  • Hash-Based: Balances traffic across backends using a hashing algorithm.
  • Health Probes: Directs traffic only to healthy backend instances.