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Azure Front Door Architecture and Pricing Models

Introduction

Azure Front Door is a scalable and secure entry point for delivering your web applications globally. It combines load balancing, web application firewall (WAF), SSL offloading, and content acceleration in a single platform.

Azure

Below is a concise breakdown of its key features and use cases:

Key Benefits

  • Global Load Balancing: Intelligently routes user traffic to the closest, healthiest backend endpoint worldwide for high availability and disaster recovery.
  • Dynamic Site Acceleration (DSA): Boosts web application performance by optimizing routes through Microsoft's global network, reducing latency for dynamic content.
  • Content Delivery Network Capabilities: Caches both static and dynamic content at edge locations globally, bringing content closer to users and offloading origin servers.
  • Web Application Firewall: Protects apps from common threats (OWASP Top 10, bot protection, rate limiting).
  • SSL Offloading and End-to-End TLS: Offloads SSL termination to Azure Front Door to reduce load on backend servers.
  • Custom Domains and Free Certificates: Allows you to use your own custom domain names and provides free, auto-rotating SSL certificates to secure your applications.
  • URL-based Routing and Rewrite: Enables flexible traffic management based on URL paths and headers, including URL rewriting.
  • Health Probes: Monitors backend health, automatically redirecting traffic from unhealthy endpoints for continuous availability.
  • Private Link Support (Premium Tier): Securely connects Front Door to your backend origins via Microsoft's private network.

Use Case Scenarios

  • High-Availability Web Applications: Automatically reroutes traffic to healthy endpoints across regions.
  • Global Content Delivery: Delivers content with low latency using Microsoft's global edge network.
  • Security Enhancement: Combines WAF with DDoS protection and HTTPS enforcement.
  • Multi-Region Backend Load Balancing: Supports active-active or active-passive failover across multiple Azure regions.
  • Modern App Delivery: Integrates with static web apps, APIs, microservices, or any HTTP/HTTPS backend (including on-prem or multi-cloud).

Routing architecture overview

Azure Front Door handles traffic in steps:

  1. The client sends a request to Front Door.
  2. Front Door checks your settings to decide which origin server (like your website or app) should get the request.
  3. Along the way, features like WAF (Web Application Firewall), routing rules, rules engine, and coaching may influence how the request is handled.

Routing architecture overview

For more details: Routing architecture - Azure Front Door | Microsoft Learn

How the pricing model works?

Azure Front Door has two main tiers: Standard and Premium.

  • Base Fees: Both tiers have a fixed hourly base fee. Premium is significantly more expensive than Standard.
  • Data Transfer: Charges are based on outbound data transfer from the edge to the client and from the edge to the origin. Pricing varies by geographical zone and volume.
  • Requests: Charges apply per 10,000 requests from clients to Front Door's edge locations. The premium tier generally has a higher per-request rate.
  • Additional Features:
    • Standard: Includes basic security features like custom WAF rules and global load balancing.
    • Premium: Builds upon Standard and includes advanced security features like managed WAF rules, bot protection, and Private Link support, often at no additional cost for these specific features.
    • Some specific WAF add-ons, like CAPTCHA have separate charges.

AFD estimated pricing: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/frontdoor/

Conclusion

This article provides a comprehensive overview of the Azure Front Door service, highlighting its architecture, key advantages, and pricing model.

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