Load Balancing in Microsoft Azure

 

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Jeff Stoffel

During our TS2 Azure Boot Camp we discussed the benefits of an Availability Set.  We went into details on how our SLA states that you will have external connectivity at least 99.95% of the time when you have two or more instances deployed in the same Availability Set.  Today I would like to spend a few minutes on the Azure Load Balancer as well as an offering from one of our partners, the KEMP Virtual LoadMaster for Azure.

Combing the Azure Load Balancer with an Availability Set provides the most application resiliency. The Azure Load Balancer distributes traffic between multiple virtual machines.  Placing multiple virtual machines under the same load balancer and Availability Set enables traffic to be continuously served by at least one instance.  The Azure Load Balancer is included with our Standard tier virtual machines.

When you configure load balancing of traffic among multiple virtual machines or services, Azure provides random distribution of the incoming traffic. The following figure shows a load-balanced endpoint for encrypted web traffic that is shared among three virtual machines for the public and private TCP port of 443. These three virtual machines are in a load-balanced set.

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When Internet clients send web page requests to the public IP address of the cloud service and TCP port 443, the Azure Load Balancer performs a random balancing of those requests between the three virtual machines in the load-balanced set.

The Azure Load Balancer works at Layer 4, the Transport layer of the OSI model. This means that it operates on individual streams of TCP or UDP traffic, as defined by their source and destination IP addresses and port numbers. Load balancing at Layer 4 ensures that all of the packets for a given TCP connection or UDP message exchange are routed to the same destination.

Let’s now cover some of the additional capabilities provided by the KEMP Virtual LoadMaster for Azure.

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The Kemp Virtual LoadMaster for Azure builds on the capabilities of Azure Load Balancing. This solution is optimized to run natively inside of the Microsoft Azure Cloud and delivers Layer 4-7 load balancing and application delivery services for Azure-hosted workloads.

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Virtual LoadMaster for Azure complements applications deployed in the Microsoft Azure IaaS infrastructure by providing comprehensive Layer 7 traffic distribution and session persistence, application health checking and SSL acceleration. Additional services such as Intrusion Prevention, caching and compression for published services and the ability to share a single endpoint to publish multiple virtual services optimizes traffic flow for applications deployed in Microsoft Azure.

  

  Opportunities to learn more:

 Partnership With KEMP to Drive Your Microsoft Cloud Business (CSD444PAL)

Are you concerned that Cloud computing is cutting your profits? Are you exploring complementary solutions to help build your Microsoft Azure business and increase your profitability? Join this Microsoft & KEMP sponsored webinar and learn how KEMP’s Virtual LoadMasters (VLMs) enable high availability solutions to drive Microsoft Azure adoption.

Topics include:

  • Introduction of Microsoft Azure and KEMP’s VLM for Azure
  • Typical MS scenarios that involve KEMP solutions
  • Why partner with KEMP
  • Overview of KEMP’s award winning partner program and benefits

Delivering Advanced Highly Available Hybrid Cloud Solution with KEMP LoadMaster (CSD443PAL)

Hearing a lot about Cloud Computing lately?  Not sure what problems it solves? Join Microsoft’s Senior Technical Evangelist Keith Mayer along with Microsoft MVP Bhargav Shukla to experience firsthand how the KEMP Virtual Loadmaster can help your organization take advantage of a Microsoft Azure Cloud deployment and expand your IT platform while achieving high availability and scalability.

Topics include:

  • Why expand your IT platform to the Cloud
  • When to use Microsoft Azure Cloud to expand your IT platform
  • How can High Availability be achieved with KEMP VLM-Azure
  • What are the feature and benefits of using KEMP Loadmasters
  • What are the specific examples using Azure and KEMP LoadMaster solutions