Like the application gateway or the load balancer, the Traffic Manager is a mechanism to distribute incoming traffic among different Azure data centers. Unlike the load balancing of the other Azure balancers, the Traffic Manager works based on distribution via DNS entries, which means you deploy an DNS Name for the traffic manager. The clients connect directly to the endpoint for the application which has the best response time for his location. Traffic manager is mostly used as a frontend for Content Delivery Networks or Applications distributed over different Azure Regions. The following table summarizes the differences between all three load balancers:
|
Service |
Azure load balancer |
Application gateway |
Traffic Manager |
|
Technology |
Transport level (OSI layer 4) |
Application level (OSI layer 7) |
DNS level |
|
Application protocols supported |
Any |
HTTP and HTTPS |
Any (An HTTP/S endpoint is required for endpoint monitoring) |
|
Endpoints |
Azure VMs and cloud services role instances |
Any Azure internal IP address or public internet IP address |
Azure VMs, cloud services, Azure web apps and external endpoints |
|
VNet support |
Can be used for both Internet facing and internal (VNet) applications |
Can be used for both Internet facing and internal (VNet) applications |
Only supports Internet-facing applications |
|
Endpoint monitoring |
Supported via probes |
Supported via probes |
Supported via HTTP/HTTPS GET request |
The Azure Traffic Manager is symbolized with the following item in the Azure portal:
