Azure Traffic Manager is an Azure-hosted worldwide DNS server. It is a third-party DNS service. It goes beyond simple name and IP resolution by including load balancing and advanced features like geo-fencing and weighted, performance name resolves.
What is Azure?
Microsoft Azure is the company’s public cloud computing platform (formerly Windows Azure). It provides a wide range of cloud services, including computing, analytics, storage, and networking. Users can select from these services to create and expand new applications on the public cloud, or to operate existing apps.
The Azure platform is designed to assist organizations in managing difficulties and meeting organizational goals. It provides tools for all industries, including e-commerce, banking, and a number of Fortune 500 organizations, and is compatible with open-source technology. This gives users the freedom to utilize their favorite tools and technologies.
In this blog, we will be digging deeper into the Azure Traffic Manager
Table of Contents:
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Definition of Azure Traffic Manager
Microsoft Azure Traffic Manager enables customers to control the user traffic distribution of multiple service endpoints situated in data centers across the world. Cloud services, Web Apps, and Azure VMs are among the service endpoints supported by Azure Traffic Manager.
Users can utilize both the Azure Traffic Manager and non-Azure external endpoints. By using the traffic-routing mechanism, It uses the DNS (Domain Name System) to send client requests to the most appropriate endpoint.
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Why do we use Azure Traffic Manager?
Depending on the selected routing method, Azure traffic management selects an endpoint.
- To fulfill the needs of varied applications, it provides a wide range of traffic-routing techniques.
- After choosing an endpoint, the client is immediately connected to the appropriate service point.
- Additionally included are automatic failover and endpoint health checks.
- Additionally, it enables you to build extremely robust applications that can continue to function even if the entire Azure region goes down.
Features of the Azure Traffic Manager
It is used to deliver network traffic load balancing and management services in cloud-based systems. Azure Traffic Manager is mostly used in;
- Ensure Availability and Reduce Downtime – Traffic Manager supports automated failover for Azure Cloud Services, Azure Websites, and other defined endpoints.
- Upgrade / Maintain Endpoints Without Downtime – Traffic Manager allows endpoints to be automatically paused when there is no activity, allowing developers and IT administrators to upgrade and test the endpoint without downtime.
- Combination of hybrid applications- When used with hybrid cloud as well as on installations like “migrate-to-cloud,””burst-to-cloud,” and “failover-to-cloud,” Microsoft Azure Traffic Manager can now work with non-Azure destinations.
- Distribute Traffic – Traffic may be dispersed over many data centers or Azure destinations using nested profiles.
- Increase the availability of applications- By keeping track of your endpoints and offering automated failover when one fails, it guarantees the availability of your critical programs.
- Enhance application performance- Running cloud services or websites in data centers all around the world is made possible by Azure. Traffic is directed to the endpoint with the smallest client propagation delay, which enhances application performance.
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Routing Methods of the Azure Traffic Manager
The traffic is distributed by Azure Traffic Manager depending on one of six traffic-routing mechanisms that decide which destination is returned in the DNS response.
There are the following traffic routing strategies available:
- The primary service endpoint has the top priority with all traffic when you select the priority routing strategy, which displays a prioritized list of service endpoints.
- Traffic is forwarded to the endpoint with the next greatest priority if the primary service endpoint is unavailable.
- Weighted routing is used when you want to evenly distribute traffic or apply pre-determined weights to a group of destinations.
- This traffic-routing method involves giving each endpoint a weight, which is a number between 200 and 2000, in the Microsoft Azure Traffic Manager profile option.
- By sending traffic to the location closest to the user, this traffic routing technology helps various apps respond more quickly.
- The ‘nearest’ endpoint isn’t usually the one that is physically closest.
- On the other hand, the “Performance” traffic-routing strategy chooses the nearest destination by analyzing network latency.
- You can select MultiValue if your Azure Traffic Manager profiles only include IPv2 or IPv4 addresses as destinations.
- All appropriate endpoints are retrieved when a request for this profile is made.
- In geographic routing, a set of geographic areas must be assigned to each endpoint associated with that profile.
- Any requests from such locations are only directed to that endpoint when a region or group of regions is assigned to it.
- Use the Subnet traffic-routing method to associate groups of end-user IP address ranges with a particular endpoint inside an Azure Traffic Manager profile.
- A request is received, and the endpoint that responds is the one that corresponds to the request’s originating IP address.
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Benefits of Azure Traffic Manager
- Enhances the usability of critical applications.
- Endpoint monitoring and automated failover provide extraordinarily high application availability in the event that any endpoint fails.
- Improves responsiveness for high-performance applications.
- The Traffic Manager distributes traffic according to the optimum traffic-routing algorithm for the circumstance.
- Endpoint health is constantly monitored.
- Automatic failover in the event that the endpoints fail.
The most important thing to understand is that Azure Traffic Manager operates at the DNS level. It uses the DNS to direct clients to specific service endpoints based on traffic-routing rules and procedures. Clients can connect to the desired endpoint directly.
The Azure Traffic Manager, on the other hand, is neither a gateway nor a proxy. It is unable to assist users in viewing the traffic between the service and the client.
Conclusion:
The azure traffic manager is an external DNS that is used to distribute user traffic its routing algorithms aid in traffic distribution by determining which endpoint is returned inside the DNS response. The hands-on experience allows you to better comprehend ideas.