This solution illustrates geographic traffic routing, a process for implementing geo-distributed apps. The solution directs traffic to specific endpoints based on various metrics. It uses Azure Traffic Manager to route traffic to endpoints based on regional requirements, corporate and international regulations, and data needs.
Traffic Manager
Azure Traffic Manager allows you to regulate the distribution of user traffic by using DNS to direct requests to the most appropriate service endpoint supported on a traffic-routing method and, therefore, the health of the endpoints.
Azure traffic manager selects an endpoint based on the configured routing method. It supports a variety of traffic-routing methods to suit different application needs. After selecting endpoints, the client is connected directly to the appropriate service point. It also provides endpoint health checks and automatic failover. It also enables you to build a highly available application that is resilient to failure, including the failure of an entire Azure region.
Features Of Azure Traffic Manager
Some of the features are discussed below
Increase application availability
It provides high availability for critical applications by monitoring endpoints and delivering automatic failover when an endpoint goes down.
Improve application performance
Azure allows you to run cloud services or websites in data centres located all over the world. It enhances application responsiveness by directing traffic to the endpoint with the lowest network latency for the client.
Perform service maintenance without downtime
You can perform planned maintenance operations on your applications without downtime. It can direct traffic to alternative endpoints while the upkeep is ongoing.
Combine hybrid applications
Microsoft Azure Traffic Manager supports external, non-Azure endpoints, enabling it to be used with hybrid cloud and on-premises deployments, including the “burst-to-cloud”, “migrate-to-cloud,” and “failover-to-cloud” scenarios.
Distribute traffic for complex deployments
Using nested Azure Traffic Manager profiles, multiple traffic-routing methods are often combined to make sophisticated and versatile rules to scale to the requirements of larger, more complex deployments.
Architecture
Dataflow
1. The client sends a request to the cloud application.
2. The traffic manager uses DNS to direct the client requests to the appropriate service endpoint, using a traffic routing method. Traffic Manager also provides health monitoring for every endpoint.
3. The instance of the cloud application selected by the Traffic Manager processes the request.
Components
Azure Stack Hub
Azure Stack Hub is an extension of Azure. It brings the agility of cloud computing to your on-premises environment. In this architecture, it hosts the on-premises version of the app.
Traffic Manager
Traffic Manager is a DNS-based traffic load balancer. It's used here to direct client requests to the appropriate endpoint.
Domain Name System (DNS)
DNS translates (or resolves) a website or service name to its IP address.
Cloud endpoint
Public IP addresses route incoming traffic through Traffic Manager to the endpoints for the public cloud app resources.
Local endpoint
Public IP addresses route incoming traffic through Traffic Manager to the endpoints for the local cloud app resources.
Alternatives
You can use Azure Front Door instead of Traffic Manager for web applications. Azure Front Door works on Layer 7 (the HTTP/HTTPS layer). It can keep traffic on the best path to your app, improve service scale, reduce latency, and increase throughput for your global users with edge load balancing, SSL offload, and application acceleration.
Considerations
Reliability
Use appropriate on-premises hardware configuration and software deployment practices to ensure that locally deployed apps are configured for high availability.
Operational excellence
The operational excellence pillar of the Azure Well-Architected Framework covers the operations processes that keep an application running in production.
Performance efficiency
The key benefit of cross-cloud scaling is the ability to deliver on-demand scaling. Scaling must happen between public and local cloud infrastructure and provide a consistent, reliable service based on demand.
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