Windows Azure Traffic Manager High Availability and Performance

Windows Azure Traffic Manager is a service that helps ensure high availability and performance for your applications by routing traffic to the best-performing endpoint. It does this by monitoring the performance of your endpoints and automatically switching traffic to a different endpoint if one becomes unavailable.

Traffic Manager uses a routing method called "geographic routing", which directs users to the endpoint that is closest to their geographic location. This can improve performance by reducing latency and improving responsiveness.

By using Traffic Manager, you can improve the availability and performance of your applications, and reduce the risk of downtime and data loss. This is especially important for applications that require high uptime and responsiveness.

Configuring Traffic Manager is a straightforward process that can be done through the Azure portal.

To start, you'll need to create a Traffic Manager profile, which can be done by clicking on the "Create a resource" button in the Azure portal.

You can choose from two types of Traffic Manager profiles: Endpoints and Routing Method. Endpoints are used to route traffic to a specific endpoint, while Routing Method determines how traffic is routed to the endpoints.

For example, you can use the Priority routing method to route traffic to the endpoint with the highest priority. Traffic Manager will automatically detect the endpoint with the highest priority based on the status of the endpoint.

To configure Traffic Manager, you'll need to add endpoints to your profile. This can be done by clicking on the "Add endpoint" button in the Azure portal.

You can add multiple endpoints to your profile, each with its own routing method. For example, you can add an endpoint for a primary data center and an endpoint for a secondary data center.

Traffic Manager will automatically detect which endpoint is available and route traffic to it. This helps to ensure that your application is always available and responsive, even in the event of an outage.

To monitor the performance of your Traffic Manager profile, you can use the Azure Monitor. This will give you real-time data on the performance of your profile, including latency, throughput, and error rates.

By monitoring your Traffic Manager profile, you can identify any issues and make adjustments as needed. This helps to ensure that your application is always performing at its best.

Azure Traffic Manager offers four primary routing methods: Priority, Weighted, Performance, and Geographic.

You can use the Priority routing method to specify which endpoints have priority for traffic and which backup endpoints will route traffic in case of failover.

Weighted routing allows you to allocate a traffic cost and distribute traffic evenly among groups of different weighted endpoints.

Performance routing routes traffic based on network latency, directing users to the node that offers the best performance.

Geographic routing directs users to endpoints by detecting the geographic location of the DNS request and routing them to the nearest endpoint.

Here are the routing methods in detail:

Additionally, Azure Traffic Manager offers Multivalue routing, which is available for IPv4/IPv6 endpoints only, and Subnet routing, which allows you to route specific IP ranges to designated endpoints based on the IP addresses from which requests are coming.

With Azure Traffic Manager, you can direct traffic to endpoints with the lowest network latency for each specific client, resulting in higher application responsiveness across your cloud services or websites.

Traffic Manager provides automatic endpoint failover, which means your network administrators can continuously monitor your endpoints and ensure higher availability of your business-critical applications.

You can use Traffic Manager across various hybrid cloud and on-premises deployments, including scenarios like "burst-to-cloud", "migrate-to-cloud", and "failover-to-cloud."

Traffic Manager also allows you to combine multiple traffic-routing methods to use it in complex deployment scenarios that require flexible and sophisticated routing rules.

With Traffic Manager, you can avoid downtime for websites during periods of planned maintenance by directing traffic to endpoints of your choice.

Geo-routing is a powerful feature that directs users to the nearest endpoint, ensuring speedy service and compliance with data traffic regulations. This results in better performance and availability for your app.

To route incoming traffic for high performance and availability, you can use the Geo-routing method, which has no upfront cost and no termination fees. You only pay for what you use.

With Geo-routing, you can direct users to the nearest endpoint based on their geographic location. This is achieved by detecting the geographic location of the DNS request and directing users to the nearest endpoint.

Here are the traffic-routing methods that can be used for high performance and availability:

The DNS cache plays a crucial role in speeding up DNS queries. It stores DNS responses for a certain period, determined by the 'time-to-live' (TTL) property of each DNS record.

The duration of the cache can vary greatly, from as low as 0 seconds to as high as 2,147,483,647 seconds.

When configuring Traffic Manager, you need to consider the endpoint priority.

You can explicitly set the priority for each endpoint using the 'priority' property, which is a value between 1 and 1000, with lower values representing higher priorities.

Endpoints can't share priority values, so make sure each endpoint has a unique priority.

Setting the 'priority' property is optional, and when omitted, Traffic Manager will use a default priority based on the endpoint order.

This means that if you don't specify a priority, the order in which you list your endpoints will determine their priority.

This can be useful if you have a small number of endpoints and don't need to worry about complex priority settings.

Azure offers a pay-as-you-go pricing model, allowing you to only pay for the services you use.

This means you can scale up or down to meet changing demands without incurring unnecessary costs.

Azure's pricing is based on the number of endpoints, with a minimum of 1 endpoint required for the Traffic Manager service.

Azure Traffic Manager is a powerful tool that directs client requests to the most suitable service endpoint using a DNS (Domain Name Server). It examines the health of the endpoints and applies a traffic-routing method to distribute the traffic.

You can operate your Internet-facing endpoints inside or outside Azure, and Traffic Manager will take advantage of automatic failover models to route your traffic even in the event of an entire Azure region experiencing operational failure.

Traffic Manager offers core functionalities, including distribution of traffic by selecting one of several traffic-routing methods, and uninterrupted monitoring of endpoint health with automatic endpoint failover.

The main advantage of using Traffic Manager is that you can choose between a variety of routing methods for your traffic.

Here are the core functionalities of Azure Traffic Manager:

Traffic Manager probes endpoints from multiple locations, and the consecutive failure determines what happens within each region. This is why endpoints receive health probes from Traffic Manager with a higher frequency than the setting used for Probing Interval.

Azure pricing can be a bit complex, but let's break it down. The cost of Azure Traffic Manager is determined by the number of received DNS queries.

The more DNS queries your application receives, the higher your Azure Traffic Manager costs will be. It's essential to monitor your DNS query usage to stay within your budget.

Here are the factors that affect Azure Traffic Manager costs:

These factors can significantly impact your overall Azure pricing, so it's crucial to keep them in mind when planning your application's infrastructure.