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Components

Updated Nov 16, 2020 ·
NOTES

This is not an exhaustive documentation of all the existing Azure Services. These are summarized notes for the Azure Certifications.

To see the complete documentation, please go to: Azure documentation

Overview​

Azure Load Balancers are composed of several key components that work together to manage incoming network traffic efficiently. These components ensure:

  • Effective load balancing of network traffic.
  • Optimization of application availability.
  • Seamless communication between clients and backend resources.

Frontend IP Configuration​

This component is the main point of contact for clients accessing the load-balanced application.

  • Represents the access point for clients.
  • Can be either a private or public IP address, depending on the load balancer type.
  • Supports multiple Frontend IP addresses.

Backend Pool​

The backend pool handles incoming requests and consists of various VMs or instances.

  • A collection of VMs or instances within a scale set designed to manage incoming requests.
  • Automatically adjusts when instances are added or removed, ensuring optimal traffic distribution.

Health Probes​

Health probes check the status and readiness of the instances in the backend pool.

  • Assesses the health of instances and their readiness to handle traffic.
  • Identifies which instances are healthy and capable of receiving traffic.
  • Prevents traffic from being routed to unhealthy instances.

Load Balancing Rules​

These rules define how incoming traffic is distributed across the backend pool.

  • Specifies how inbound traffic should be distributed among backend instances.
  • Example: A rule for port 80 (HTTP) that routes traffic from the frontend IP to port 80 on backend instances.

High Availability Ports​

High availability ports enable protocol-agnostic load balancing for all ports.

  • Configures a rule for 'protocol - all and port - 0.'
  • Facilitates load balancing for all TCP and UDP flows across all ports of an internal standard load balancer.

Inbound NAT Rules​

Inbound NAT rules manage traffic forwarding from specific IP and port combinations to backend instances.

  • Forwards traffic with specific frontend IP and port combinations to designated VMs or instances.
  • Useful for scenarios like RDP connections to multiple VMs behind a load balancer.

Outbound Rules​

Outbound rules handle network address translation for outbound traffic from backend VMs.

  • Configures outbound network address translation (NAT) for all VMs within the backend pool.
  • Enables outbound communication to the Internet.
  • Supported only on the Standard Load Balancer.
  • Not available on the Basic Load Balancer.