Azure Traffic Manager
Author: Ronald Fung
Creation Date: 2 June 2023
Next Modified Date: 2 June 2024
A. Introduction
Azure Traffic Manager is a DNS-based traffic load balancer. This service allows you to distribute traffic to your public facing applications across the global Azure regions. Traffic Manager also provides your public endpoints with high availability and quick responsiveness.
Traffic Manager uses DNS to direct client requests to the appropriate service endpoint based on a traffic-routing method. Traffic manager also provides health monitoring for every endpoint. The endpoint can be any Internet-facing service hosted inside or outside of Azure. Traffic Manager provides a range of traffic-routing methods and endpoint monitoring options to suit different application needs and automatic failover models. Traffic Manager is resilient to failure, including the failure of an entire Azure region.
B. How is it used at Seagen
As a biopharma research company using Microsoft Azure, you can use Azure Traffic Manager to improve the performance, availability, and reliability of your web applications and services. Here are some ways you can use Azure Traffic Manager:
Load balancing: Azure Traffic Manager provides load balancing capabilities, allowing you to distribute traffic across multiple endpoints, such as web servers, virtual machines, or containers.
Traffic routing: Azure Traffic Manager provides traffic routing capabilities, allowing you to route traffic to the most appropriate endpoint based on user location, endpoint health, or other criteria.
Failover: Azure Traffic Manager provides failover capabilities, allowing you to automatically redirect traffic to healthy endpoints in the event of an endpoint failure.
Geographic routing: Azure Traffic Manager provides geographic routing capabilities, allowing you to route traffic to the endpoint closest to the user, reducing latency and improving performance.
Performance optimization: Azure Traffic Manager provides performance optimization capabilities, allowing you to monitor and optimize the performance of your endpoints, and ensuring that users are directed to the fastest and most responsive endpoint.
Availability improvement: Azure Traffic Manager provides availability improvement capabilities, allowing you to ensure that your web applications and services are always available to users, even in the event of an endpoint failure.
Integration with Azure services: Azure Traffic Manager integrates with other Azure services, such as Azure App Service and Azure Virtual Machines, allowing you to easily manage and scale your web applications and services.
Overall, by leveraging Azure Traffic Manager, you can improve the performance, availability, and reliability of your web applications and services, and make sure that your users have a seamless experience, regardless of their location or endpoint health. By using Azure Traffic Manager for load balancing, traffic routing, failover, geographic routing, performance optimization, availability improvement, and integration with other Azure services, you can effectively manage your web applications and services and make data-driven decisions that support your biopharma research efforts.
C. Features
Azure Traffic Manager is a cloud-based traffic management service that provides a range of features to improve the availability, performance, and reliability of web applications and services. Here are the key features of Azure Traffic Manager:
Global availability: Azure Traffic Manager provides global availability, allowing you to distribute traffic across multiple endpoints in different regions around the world.
Load balancing: Azure Traffic Manager provides load balancing capabilities, allowing you to distribute traffic across multiple endpoints, such as web servers, virtual machines, or containers.
Traffic routing: Azure Traffic Manager provides traffic routing capabilities, allowing you to route traffic to the most appropriate endpoint based on user location, endpoint health, or other criteria.
Failover: Azure Traffic Manager provides failover capabilities, allowing you to automatically redirect traffic to healthy endpoints in the event of an endpoint failure.
Geographic routing: Azure Traffic Manager provides geographic routing capabilities, allowing you to route traffic to the endpoint closest to the user, reducing latency and improving performance.
Performance optimization: Azure Traffic Manager provides performance optimization capabilities, allowing you to monitor and optimize the performance of your endpoints, and ensuring that users are directed to the fastest and most responsive endpoint.
Availability improvement: Azure Traffic Manager provides availability improvement capabilities, allowing you to ensure that your web applications and services are always available to users, even in the event of an endpoint failure.
Integration with Azure services: Azure Traffic Manager integrates with other Azure services, such as Azure App Service and Azure Virtual Machines, allowing you to easily manage and scale your web applications and services.
Customizable routing rules: Azure Traffic Manager provides customizable routing rules, allowing you to tailor traffic routing based on your specific needs and requirements.
Security and compliance: Azure Traffic Manager provides advanced security and compliance features, including role-based access control, encryption, and compliance certifications.
Overall, Azure Traffic Manager provides a powerful and flexible traffic management solution for web applications and services, with features that enable global availability, load balancing, traffic routing, failover, geographic routing, performance optimization, availability improvement, integration with other Azure services, customizable routing rules, and security and compliance. By leveraging these features, you can effectively manage your web applications and services and make data-driven decisions that support your biopharma research efforts.
D. Where Implemented
E. How it is tested
Testing Azure Traffic Manager involves verifying that the service is properly configured and that it is effectively distributing traffic across your endpoints. Here are some steps you can take to test Azure Traffic Manager:
Verify configuration: Verify that Azure Traffic Manager is properly configured and integrated with your Azure account and web applications and services.
Test endpoint availability: Test Azure Traffic Manager by verifying that all endpoints are available and responsive, ensuring that the service is properly routing traffic to healthy endpoints.
Test load balancing: Test Azure Traffic Manager by verifying that traffic is properly load balanced across all endpoints, ensuring that the service is effectively distributing traffic.
Test traffic routing: Test Azure Traffic Manager by verifying that traffic is properly routed to the most appropriate endpoint based on user location, endpoint health, or other criteria, ensuring that the service is effectively routing traffic.
Test failover: Test Azure Traffic Manager by verifying that traffic is properly redirected to healthy endpoints in the event of an endpoint failure, ensuring that the service is effectively providing failover capabilities.
Test geographic routing: Test Azure Traffic Manager by verifying that traffic is properly routed to the endpoint closest to the user, reducing latency and improving performance.
Test performance optimization: Test Azure Traffic Manager by monitoring and optimizing the performance of your endpoints, ensuring that users are directed to the fastest and most responsive endpoint.
Test security: Test Azure Traffic Manager by verifying that the service provides advanced security features, helping to protect the privacy and security of your data.
Test scalability: Test Azure Traffic Manager by verifying that the service is highly scalable, allowing you to easily scale up or down as your traffic needs change.
Test cost-effectiveness: Test Azure Traffic Manager by verifying that the service provides a cost-effective traffic management solution, allowing you to optimize your traffic management costs based on your traffic patterns.
Overall, testing Azure Traffic Manager involves verifying that the service is effectively distributing traffic across your endpoints, and providing load balancing, traffic routing, failover, geographic routing, performance optimization, security, scalability, and cost-effectiveness capabilities. By taking these steps, you can ensure that you are effectively using Azure Traffic Manager to manage your web applications and services and make data-driven decisions that support your biopharma research efforts.
F. 2023 Roadmap
????
G. 2024 Roadmap
????
H. Known Issues
As with any software or service, there may be known issues or limitations with Azure Traffic Manager that users should be aware of. Here are some of the known issues with Azure Traffic Manager:
Endpoint monitoring limitations: Azure Traffic Manager has some limitations on endpoint monitoring, which may impact its ability to accurately determine endpoint health and availability.
Geographic routing limitations: Azure Traffic Manager has some limitations on geographic routing, which may impact its ability to accurately route traffic to the endpoint closest to the user.
Custom domain limitations: Azure Traffic Manager has some limitations on custom domain support, which may impact its ability to support custom domain names.
DNS limitations: Azure Traffic Manager has some limitations on DNS resolution times, which may impact its ability to effectively route traffic to the appropriate endpoint.
Integration limitations: Integration with other Azure services may be limited, depending on the specific services being used.
Cost optimization: Optimizing traffic routing costs in Azure Traffic Manager can be complex, requiring careful management of traffic patterns and endpoint availability.
Overall, while Azure Traffic Manager offers a powerful and flexible traffic management solution for web applications and services, users must be aware of these known issues and take steps to mitigate their impact. This may include carefully monitoring endpoint health, custom domain support, DNS resolution times, traffic routing costs, and integration with other Azure services. By taking these steps, users can ensure that they are effectively using Azure Traffic Manager to manage their web applications and services and make data-driven decisions that support their biopharma research efforts.
[x] Reviewed by Enterprise Architecture
[x] Reviewed by Application Development
[x] Reviewed by Data Architecture