Microsoft Azure – Getting Started with Azure Front Door

Pre-requisite: Azure VM

Azure Front Door is a modern cloud service offered by Microsoft, which assists from one individual to a vast enterprise, it can manage their workflow regardless of their location. Azure Front Door can help deliver higher availability, lower latency, larger scale, and more secure user experiences to the users.  The Azure front door can be a helpful tool, whether it’s for distributing content and files or developing global apps and APIs. 

It is an emerging cloud Content Delivery Network (CDN) that aids in delivering better and faster, dependable, and more secure access between users and the static and dynamic web content of users’ applications across the world. Azure Front Door delivers its content using Microsoft’s global edge network, which has hundreds of regional and international POPs dispersed around the world near businesses and ends users.

Getting Started With Azure Front Door:

To start with the azure Front door, the very first step requires creating a Front Door profile. Here are a few simple steps to create an Azure Front Door profile. 

Step 1: First, Sign in to the Azure portal.

Step  2: In the home page tab select + Create a resource.  Here, Search for Front Door and CDN profiles. Then select Create.

Step  3: On the Compare offerings page, select Quick to create. Then select Continue.

Step  4: Select the required options on the ‘Create a Front Door profile’ page.

Step  5: To deploy the Azure Front Door profile, select “Review + Create” and then “Create.”.

Creating a Front Door for Application

Azure Front Door aggregates two instances of a web application running in different Azure regions. when we build a Front Door using equal-weighted and equal-priority backends. This configuration routes traffic to the nearest application-running site. The web application is constantly monitored by Azure Front Door. if it is founded that the nearest site is unavailable, the service automatically switches to the next available site.

Since we’ve already discussed the steps to create a front door profile, here are the further steps to take when configuring Azure Front Door for the required application.

Step  1: Begin by configuring a front-end host for Azure Front Door.

Step  2: Select Create a resource from the Azure home page, then,  Select Networking > All Profiles > Front Door and CDN.

Step  3: Next, Select ‘Explore other offerings from the Compare offerings page. Then choose Azure Front Door and click on the ‘Continue’ button.

Step  4: Next, Fill out the basic information on the Create a Front Door page, for example, on the subscription tab, select the required subscription, in the resource group, select Create new and enter the name of the resource group, for example, here, ‘FrontDoorQS rg0’, and then click Next: Configuration.

Step  5: Select + to open Add a frontend host in Frontends/domains.

Step  6: Enter a globally unique hostname for the Hostname. as shown in the image below:

Step 7: The next step involves creating a backend pool that contains two web apps. Here, Select + to open in Backend pools when creating a front door. Create a pool for the backend. Next, Name it, for example, enter myBackendPool, then select Add a backend.

Step 8: Now, In the Add, a backend pane, fill in the required information, for instance, in the place of ‘Backend host type’ select App service, then select the subscription, and in the place of ‘Backend host name’ Select the first one web app. As in the image, and then, select ‘Add’. the other fields can be left default.

Step 9: Next, Select Add a backend again. And fill in the same information again. However, this time, Select the second web app which was created and then, selects ‘Add’. the other fields will be left default.

Step 10: Now, To finish configuring the backend pool, click ‘Add’ in the Add a backend pool pane as in the image. 

Step 11: Finally, add a routing rule. Which is an important step as it maps the frontend host to the backend pool. Here select + to configure a routing rule. Next, In Add a rule, enter a Name, for example, ‘LocationRule’. Then, Accept all the default values, then select Add to add the routing rule.

Next, Select Review + Create, and then Create.

When you create a Front Door, the configuration is deployed globally in a short amount of time. When finished, it can be checked by connecting to the frontend host. Go to the frontend host address in a browser to do so. The request will be routed automatically to the closest server to the user from the specified servers in the backend pool.