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Difficulty: MediumApplication Load Balancing and Delivery

A company is designing a regional web-based application in the North Europe region. The application is hosted on five Azure Virtual Machines, each configured with a Basic SKU public IP address for administrative access. You need to design a load balancing solution to distribute incoming HTTP and HTTPS traffic across these virtual machines. The solution must meet the following requirements:
- Route traffic based on the URL path (e.g., `/api/*` and `/web/*` to different backend pools).
- Terminate SSL/TLS sessions at the load balancer level to offload decryption overhead.
- Keep the existing virtual machines and their Basic SKU public IP configurations without modification.
- Restrict all traffic distribution to the regional level.

Which Azure load balancing service should you recommend?

  1. A
    Azure Traffic Manager
  2. Azure Application Gateway (Standard v2)Answer
  3. C
    Azure Load Balancer (Standard)
  4. D
    Azure Load Balancer (Basic)

Answer

Azure Application Gateway (Standard v2)
Azure Application Gateway (Standard v2) is the correct service because it is a regional Layer 7 load balancer that fully supports path-based routing (e.g., `/api/*`) and SSL/TLS termination. Since it communicates with the backend virtual machines using their private IP addresses within the virtual network, the VMs' existing Basic SKU public IP configurations will not cause any SKU mismatch validation conflicts.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Analyze the layer routing and protocol requirements.
The application requires HTTP/HTTPS routing, SSL/TLS termination, and URL path-based routing. This necessitates a Layer 7 (application-layer) load balancer, ruling out Layer 4 load balancers (Azure Load Balancer) and DNS-based routers (Azure Traffic Manager).
URL path-based routing and SSL termination are only available on Layer 7 load balancing services.
2
Analyze the regionality and network scope.
The application must be restricted to the regional level (North Europe). Azure Application Gateway is a regional service, which fits this requirement.
Azure Front Door is a global service and would not satisfy the regional restriction constraint.
3
Evaluate the backend SKU compatibility constraints.
The backend virtual machines have Basic SKU public IP addresses. While Azure Standard Load Balancer prevents backend pool membership for VMs with Basic SKU public IPs, Azure Application Gateway routes traffic using private IP addresses within the virtual network. Thus, Application Gateway avoids the SKU mismatch validation error and allows the VMs to retain their Basic SKU public IPs.
Application Gateway connects to backends via private IP addresses, bypassing any public IP SKU mismatch constraints.

Key Concept

Selecting between Azure Layer 4 and Layer 7 load balancing solutions while respecting SKU compatibility constraints.
Estimated Time:2m 0s
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Topics

Application Load Balancing and Delivery

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