Azure – Networking – Part 32 – Azure Front Door 1 – Create And Configure Azure Front Door

Hello Friends,

Hope you all are doing good. In our last article we have discussed on Azure network service Azure Front Door. Today in this article we will continue with Azure Front Door and will see how to create and configure Azure Front Door in Azure portal.



Tool Installation Articles :

1. Configure Azure Command Line Interface ( Azure CLI) On Windows
2. Configure PowerShell For Microsoft Azure Az Module On Windows

Previous Azure Series :

1. Learn Basics Of Azure Networking In 100 Hours
2. Learn Basics Of Microsoft Azure Storage services
3. Learn Basic Of Azure Active Directory And Azure Identity And Access Management
4. Azure DevOps – Learn at one place
5. Learn Basics Of Lift-And-Shift Migration To Azure

If you have missed our previous articles on Azure Networking, please check it in following links.

Part 1 – Basics of Azure Networking

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Part 23 – Azure Load Balancer -Configure Basic Load Balancer – 1

Part 24 – Azure Load Balancer – Configure Basic Load Balancer – 2

Part 25 – Azure Load Balancer – Configure Basic Load Balancer -3

Part 26 – Azure Load Balancer – Outbound Connectivity

Part 27 – Azure Load Balancer – Outbound Rule – Lab Exercise

Part 28 – Azure Virtual Network NAT (Network Address Translation)

Part 29 – Azure Virtual Network NAT Gateway

Part 30 – Configure Azure Virtual Network NAT Gateway In Azure Portal

Part 31 – Azure Front Door

Next Article : Part 33 – Azure Front Door 2 – Priority Routing

Lab Exercise

In our last article, we have discussed the basics of Azure Front Door. In next couple of articles we will see more details on Azure Front Door. Today let’s configure Azure Front Door (ADF) for the following scenario.

Scenario

As showing in the above figure, the scenario is our application hosted in three different location like , East US, West US, West Europe and we need to configure Azure Front Door in front of this so that users traffic will be handle by AFD. Let’s start with our Lab exercise.

Step 1 – Log in to Azure portal and created 3 virtual machines in 3 different region as showing in the following figure.

As we know Azure Front Door (AFD) works globally and there is no constraint like all the resource must be in same region as AFD location. So we can have resources in different region other than in the location AFD.

Step 2 – After created all required virtual machine, install IIS and configure a home.html page in each virtual machine. We can see the page content as showing in the following figure.

Step 3 – In the next step, let’s create and configure Azure Front Door instance in Central US region. As showing in the following figures. From the search bar try to find Front Door.

Step 4 – Once Front Door service page visible, Click on Create front Door button to add a new Front Door as showing in the above figure.

Step 5 – In the Basics tab of Create Front Door page, enter or select the following information, and then select Next: Configuration to move to next tab.

Step 6 – In Frontends/domains section, select + to open Add a frontend host pop-up. For Host name, enter a globally unique hostname. This example here it is ManasAFD. Select Add as showing in the following figure.

Step 7 – Next, let’s create a backend pool that contains our three host virtual machine. in Backend pools, select + to open Add a backend pool and after Giving a meaning full name click + Add a backend. In the Add a backend blade, select the following information. The important information is the Priority and Weight of this endpoint. and then click Add to add the end point.

Step 8 – Select Add on the Add a backend pool blade to complete the configuration of the backend pool as showing in the above figure.

Step 9 – The last one is, adding a routing rule. A routing rule maps our frontend host to the backend pool. The rule forwards a request for ManasAFD.azurefd.net to my-Backend-Pool. To add a rule in Routing rules section, select + to configure a routing rule.

Step 10 – In Add a rule, for Name, enter My-AFD-Rule. I have leave all the value with its default values, and then click Add  button to add the routing rule as showing in the above figure.

Select Review + Create, and then Create to complete the configuration of Azure Front Door.

Step 11 – After the resource configured successfully, let’s check if our Azure Front Door configuration are up to the mark.

As we can see in the following figure, we have successfully configured the AFD resource. We can see ManasAFD.azurefd.net is the frontend link to our application and user will use this link to send request.

Testing AFD

Now time comes to test our configuration. Let’s send request to our home.html page by through our frontend/domain. in our case it is ManasAFD.azurefd.net. When user send request to ManasAFD.azurefd.net\home.html, the Azure Front Door will check the rule, health of the servers and also it will check the priority before it forward traffic to the backend.

ADF will check the health of both US region servers first because their priority set to 1 and then if it found both US servers are healthy it will check the latency of both server and then it forward the traffic to the server which has low latency rate. In case it found both the server is down or their health report is down then it will forward the traffics to the secondary server, which priority set to 2 if it’s health report is good.

As showing in the above figure, when I send request to ManasAFD.azurefd.net\home.html, it forward the traffics to the server in East US region because it’s priority has set to 1. When I try to compare the latency from all 3 servers using Azure Speed Test I found the best latency was from East US region as showing in the following figure.

With the above information, I am concluding this article. I hope this is informative to you. Please let me know if I missed anything important or if my understanding is not up to the mark.

Next Article : Part 33 – Azure Front Door 2 – Priority Routing

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