Azure Application Gateway

A scalable, secure web traffic load balancer that enables you to manage traffic to your web applications.

What is Azure Application Gateway?

Azure Application Gateway is a web traffic load balancer that enables you to manage traffic to your web applications. It provides:

  • Layer 7 Load Balancing: Directs HTTP/S traffic to and from your web servers based on characteristics like URL path, host headers, and more.
  • Web Application Firewall (WAF): Protects your web applications from common web vulnerabilities and exploits.
  • SSL Termination: Decrypts SSL traffic so that web servers don't have to.
  • Cookie-based Session Affinity: Directs requests from a client to the same backend server for persistence.
  • Health Probes: Monitors the health of your backend servers and removes unhealthy instances from rotation.
  • URL-based Routing: Routes traffic based on the URL of the request.
  • Host-based Routing: Routes traffic to different backend pools based on the host header in the request.

Application Gateway can be used for a variety of scenarios, including:

  • Load balancing HTTP/S traffic across multiple web servers.
  • Providing secure access to your web applications with SSL termination and WAF.
  • Implementing advanced routing scenarios like URL-based routing and host-based routing.

Key Components

Listeners

Listen for incoming traffic on a specific port, protocol, IP address, and certificate.

Rules

Determine how traffic is routed to backend pools based on listener and request characteristics.

Backend Pools

Groups of backend servers that receive traffic.

Health Probes

Regularly check the health of backend servers.

WAF (Web Application Firewall)

Protects against OWASP top 10 vulnerabilities.

SSL Certificate Management

Handles SSL termination and certificate management.

Getting Started

To get started with Azure Application Gateway, you can follow these steps:

  1. Create an Application Gateway: Deploy an Application Gateway instance through the Azure portal, Azure CLI, or Azure PowerShell.
  2. Configure Listeners: Define listeners for your incoming HTTP/S traffic.
  3. Configure Backend Pools: Specify the backend servers that will host your application.
  4. Configure Health Probes: Set up health probes to monitor the backend servers.
  5. Create Routing Rules: Define rules to direct traffic from listeners to backend pools.

Refer to the Quickstart guide for a hands-on walkthrough.

Pricing and SKUs

Azure Application Gateway offers several SKUs to meet different performance and feature requirements. Choose the SKU that best fits your needs:

  • Standard v2: High availability and scalable for most workloads.
  • WAF v2: Includes all Standard v2 features plus enhanced security with a Web Application Firewall.
  • v1 SKUs: Older generation SKUs. It is recommended to use v2 SKUs for new deployments.

For detailed pricing information, please visit the Pricing page.