Day 15: Microsoft Module Core Cloud Services - Azure networking options

Important points:

• Azure Load Balancer distributes traffic within the same region to make your services more highly available and resilient. Traffic Manager works at the DNS level, and directs the client to a preferred endpoint. This endpoint can be to the region that's closest to your user.
• Load Balancer and Traffic Manager both help make your services more resilient, but in slightly different ways. When Load Balancer detects an unresponsive VM, it directs traffic to other VMs in the pool. Traffic Manager monitors the health of your endpoints.When Traffic Manager finds an unresponsive endpoint, it directs traffic to the next closest endpoint that is responsive.

Knowledge check:

1. What is an Azure region?

• One or more Azure data centers within a specific geographical location.

Azure regions help you deliver your apps and services closest to your users. West US and North Europe are examples.

• A way of breaking networks into smaller networks.
• Firewall rules which define the flow of traffic in and out of Azure.

2. Which of the following is true about virtual networks?

• You configure virtual networks through software.

Software enables you to treat a virtual network just like your own network. Azure maintains the physical hardware for you.

• A virtual network accepts network traffic on all ports. You configure the firewall through virtual machines.
• Virtual networks are always reachable from the internet.

3. Which is true about Azure Load Balancer?

• You must use Azure Load Balancer if you want to distribute traffic among your virtual machines running in Azure.
• Azure Load Balancer works with internet-facing traffic only.
• Azure Load Balancer distributes traffic among similar systems, making your services more highly available.

If one system is unavailable, Azure Load Balancer stops sending traffic to it. It then directs traffic to one of the responsive servers.

4. What is network latency?

• The amount of data that can fit on the connection.
• The distance data must travel to reach its destination.
• The time it takes for data to travel over the network.

Latency measures the time it takes for data to reach its destination. Latency is typically measured in milliseconds.

5. How does Azure Traffic Manager reduce latency?

• It chooses only the fastest networks between endpoints.
• It chooses the endpoint that's closest to the user's DNS server.

Choosing the server that's closest to the user is a good way to reduce latency.

• It caches content, similar to how content delivery networks work.