Azure Application Gateway is a web traffic (OSI layer 7) load balancer that enables you to manage traffic to your web applications. Traditional load balancers operate at the transport layer (OSI layer 4 - TCP and UDP) and route traffic based on source IP address and port, to a destination IP address and port.
Application Gateway can make routing decisions based on additional attributes of an HTTP request, for example URI path or host headers. For example, you can route traffic based on the incoming URL. So if /images is in the incoming URL, you can route traffic to a specific set of servers (known as a pool) configured for images. If /video is in the URL, that traffic is routed to another pool that's optimized for videos.
This type of routing is known as application layer (OSI layer 7) load balancing. Azure Application Gateway can do URL-based routing and more.
Note
Azure provides a suite of fully managed load-balancing solutions for your scenarios.
If you're looking to do DNS based global routing and do not have requirements for Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocol termination ("SSL offload"), per-HTTP/HTTPS request or application-layer processing, review Traffic Manager.
If you need to optimize global routing of your web traffic and optimize top-tier end-user performance and reliability through quick global failover, see Front Door.
To do transport layer load balancing, review Load Balancer.
Your end-to-end scenarios may benefit from combining these solutions as needed.For an Azure load-balancing options comparison, see Overview of load-balancing options in Azure.
Provide a centralized security experience for your application via Azure Policy, Azure Advisor, and Microsoft Sentinel integration that ensures consistent security features across apps.
To learn what's new with Azure Application Gateway, see Azure updates.
Next steps
Depending on your requirements and environment, you can create a test Application Gateway using either the Azure portal, Azure PowerShell, or Azure CLI.
Azure Application Gateway is a web traffic (OSI layer 7) load balancer that enables you to manage traffic to your web applications. Traditional load balancers operate at the transport layer (OSI layer 4 - TCP and UDP) and route traffic based on source IP address and port, to a destination IP address and port.
Answer: Azure Load Balancer operates at the network transport layer (Layer 4), focusing on distributing TCP and UDP traffic efficiently. In contrast, Application Gateway operates at the application layer (Layer 7), providing more advanced routing, load balancing, and security features for web applications.
WAF is an additional setting for the application gateway. It's used to increase the security of applications behind the application gateway, and it also provides centralized protection.
Azure Front Door and Azure Application Gateway are both load balancers for HTTP/HTTPS traffic, but they have different scopes. Front Door is a global service that can distribute requests across regions, while Application Gateway is a regional service that can balance requests within a region.
Application Gateway is a Layer 7 load balancing service with advanced features like SSL termination. It's used to route client requests to your applications. Virtual Network Gateway is a VPN gateway for point-to-site (user) and site-to-site (office/datacenter) VPN connections to your own Azure VNETs.
Azure Application Gateway is a web traffic (OSI layer 7) load balancer that enables you to manage traffic to your web applications. Traditional load balancers operate at the transport layer (OSI layer 4 - TCP and UDP) and route traffic based on source IP address and port, to a destination IP address and port.
The main difference between AWS load balancer and API gateway is that load balancers distribute incoming requests, while API gateways authenticate and provide access to data sources or other applications.
Azure Web Application Firewall (WAF) is an optional addition to Azure Application Gateway. It provides inspection of HTTP requests, and it prevents malicious attacks at the web layer, such as SQL Injection or Cross-Site Scripting.
Azure Traffic Manager uses DNS-based routing to distribute incoming traffic across multiple regions, while Azure Application Gateway provides application-level routing and load balancing within a region.
Azure Application Gateway is a platform as a service (PaaS) that acts as a Layer-7 load balancer. It acts as a reverse-proxy service and provides among its offerings Azure Web Application Firewall (WAF).
Azure Front Door WAF and Azure App Gateway WAF are very similar in functionality, one of the main differences is where the WAF is applied. Azure Front Door applies the WAF filters at edge locations, way before it gets to the datacenter. App Gateway applies the filter when it enters your VNET via the App Gateway.
As a reverse proxy service, the Layer 4 operations of Application Gateway work similar to its Layer 7 proxy operations. A client establishes a TCP connection with Application Gateway, and Application Gateway itself initiates a new TCP connection to a backend server from the backend pool.
Azure Web Application Firewall on Azure Front Door is a global and centralized solution. It's deployed on Azure network edge locations around the globe. WAF-enabled web applications inspect every incoming request delivered by Azure Front Door at the network edge.
Both services can function together, although they do not require each other to work. For instance, the API gateway connects between microservices.The load balancer redirects multiple instances of a microservice component (to scale the deployment).
Application Load Balancer enables content-based routing and allows requests to be routed to different applications behind a single load balance. While the Classic Load Balancer doesn't do that, a single ELB can host single application. ALB isn't an improved Classic Load balancer. It's made on a completely new platform.
These load balancers support different protocols to handle specific types of traffic and perform advanced functions. ALBs support HTTP, HTTPS, and gRPC protocols for web-based traffic.An NLB supports TCP, UDP, and TLS protocols, which covers network-level traffic distributions.
An API gateway handles authentication and security policies, while a load balancer API distributes network traffic across multiple servers. When selecting a gateway for your application, consider which one best meets your specific security and performance needs.
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