Azure Front Door is a scalable and secure entry point for fast delivery of your global web applications. It works at Layer 7 or HTTP/HTTPS layer and uses anycast protocol with split TCP and Microsoft’s global network for improving global connectivity. Azure Front Door provides various security features including Web Application Firewall (WAF), SSL offload, and DDoS protection, enabling developers to build secure applications.
To create and configure Azure Front Door, you will need to go through the following steps:
1. Creating an Azure Front Door:
Navigate to the Azure portal. On the left-hand menu, click on ‘Create a Resource’. In the ‘New’ window, search for ‘Front Door’ and select it from the dropdown list, and then click on ‘Create’.
In the ‘Create a Front Door’ dialog box, you’ll need to fill out the following details:
- Subscription: Select the Azure subscription that should be billed for the Front Door service.
- Resource group: Create a new resource group or select an existing one.
- Name: Enter a unique name for your front door.
- Application type: For the most part, you will select ‘General Web Delivery’.
Click on ‘Next’.
2. Configuring Front Door Designer:
The Front Door Designer is where you define the behavior of your Front Door. This includes adding frontend hosts, backend pools, routing rules, and health probes.
- Frontend hosts: These are the domain names that your clients will use to access your application.
- Backend pools: These are the services (like web app, blob storage, etc.) that will handle the requests made to the frontend hosts.
- Routing rules: These define the route your requests take from the frontend hosts to the backend pools.
- Health probes: These are used to determine the health of your services in the backend pools.
3. Adding Frontend Host:
Click on the ‘+’ sign to add a new frontend host. Enter a name for this host. By default, Azure will provide a Front Door managed domain name that ends in ‘azurefd.net’. If you want to use your own custom domain, you will need to add and confirm it manually after creating the Front Door.
4. Adding Backend Pool:
Click on ‘+’ to add a new backend pool. Here, you will add the backend hosts that will serve the requests made to your frontend hosts. For each backend host, you need to define the Address, HTTP settings, and Weight (which allows you to balance traffic between different backends).
5. Adding Routing Rule:
Add a new routing rule that determines how requests are routed from the frontend hosts to the backend pool. You can define the Accepted Protocol (HTTP, HTTPS), Route Type (forward, redirect), Backend Pool, and other parameters.
6. Review and create:
Review all the settings you’ve configured for your Front Door, and hit ‘Create’. Azure will take some time to deploy your Front Door.
Remember, Azure Front Door is an important part of AZ-500 Microsoft Azure Security Technologies exam, and understanding its architectural design and how to set it up is crucial for earning this certification.
Azure Front Door offers unique features like URL-based routing, multiple-site hosting, session affinity, URL redirection, and custom domains and certificates. It also provides health probe and automatic failover capabilities that ensure high availability and reliability for your applications.
However, configuration and navigation may vary slightly depending on updates to the Azure portal and Front Door service. Hence, continuous hands-on experience and exploration are recommended for mastery.
Practice Test
True or False: Azure Front Door supports URL-based routing.
- True
- False
Answer: True
Explanation: Azure Front Door offers URL-based routing which can be used to route client requests to certain patterns targeting specific back-end service.
What is the primary purpose of the Azure Front Door Service?
- a) Provides secure, private network access
- b) Improves web application performance
- c) Enables you to run code without provisioning or managing servers
- d) Stores and retrieves binary large object (BLOB) data
Answer: b) Improves web application performance
Explanation: Azure Front Door is a global, scalable entry-point that uses HTTP load balancing and path-based routing to improve performance.
True or False: Azure Front Door supports Web Application Firewall.
- True
- False
Answer: True
Explanation: Azure Front Door integrates with Azure’s native Web Application Firewall for centralized protection of your web applications.
Azure Front Door does not encrypt data sent between your user’s client and the Front Door environment.
- a) True
- b) False
Answer: b) False
Explanation: SSL Offload feature of Azure Front Door manages and decrypts/encrypts traffic that is sent to your users.
Can Azure Front Door handle automatic failover in the case of a backend failure?
- a) Yes
- b) No
Answer: a) Yes
Explanation: Azure Front Door can automatically handle failover in the event of a backend service failure, providing high-availability to applications.
Azure Front Door does not support cookie-based session affinity.
- a) True
- b) False
Answer: b) False
Explanation: Azure Front Door supports cookie-based session affinity which helps to keep a user session on the same application instance.
The Azure Front Door service can route traffic to the closest backend using which of the following routing methods?
- a) Load-based routing
- b) Latency-based routing
- c) IP-based routing
- d) DMZ-based routing
Answer: b) Latency-based routing
Explanation: Azure Front Door uses latency-based routing to route client requests to the fastest and most available application backend.
True or False: Azure Front Door is used to optimize for best performance by routing traffic to Read Access Geo Redundant Storage (RA-GRS).
- True
- False
Answer: False
Explanation: Azure Front Door is used to optimize for best performance by routing traffic to the fastest and most available point of presence (POP).
Azure Front Door only supports HTTPS load balancing.
- a) True
- b) False
Answer: b) False
Explanation: Azure Front Door supports both HTTP and HTTPS load balancing.
What is the maximum number of custom domains that can be associated with an Azure Front Door profile?
- a) 100
- b) 500
- c) 1000
- d) 2000
Answer: c) 1000
Explanation: Azure Front Door allows up to 1000 custom domains to be associated with a Front Door profile.
True or False: You cannot move a Front Door and its related resources to a new resource group.
- True
- False
Answer: False
Explanation: You can move a Front Door and its related resources to another resource group or subscription.
Azure Front door does not support URL path-based routing.
- a) True
- b) False
Answer: b) False
Explanation: Azure Front Door does support URL Path Based Routing which directs traffic based on the request URL path to certain patterns targeting specific backend pools.
What protocol does Azure Front Door use between the client and the Azure Front Door environment?
- a) HTTP
- b) HTTPS
- c) Both HTTP and HTTPS
- d) Neither HTTP nor HTTPS
Answer: c) Both HTTP and HTTPS
Explanation: Azure Front Door uses both HTTP and HTTPS protocols between the client and the Front Door environment.
Azure Front Door does not have any caching capabilities.
- a) True
- b) False
Answer: b) False
Explanation: Azure Front Door features integrated caching capabilities to offer a better user experience.
Which type of attack does Azure Front Door Service help protect against?
- a) DDOS
- b) Ransomware
- c) Man-in-the-middle
- d) Phishing
Answer: a) DDOS
Explanation: Azure Front Door Service includes built-in DDoS protection that helps improve resistance to attacks.
Interview Questions
What is Azure Front Door?
Azure Front Door is a service that offers layer 7 load balancing for delivering fast, large scale applications. It provides global distribution for high availability, URL-based routing, and SSL offload.
What is Web Application Firewall (WAF) policy in Azure Front Door?
A Web Application Firewall (WAF) policy is a policy in Azure Front Door that offers protection of your web applications from common threats such as SQL injection and cross-site scripting.
How does Azure Front Door ensure high availability?
Azure Front Door ensures high availability by routing traffic to the fastest and most available application backend. It performs instant failover when a backend goes down.
How many routing methods are available in Azure Front Door?
Azure Front Door supports two routing methods: Weighted and Priority.
What is the role of health probes in Azure Front Door?
Health probes regularly check the status of your web service endpoints. If a problem is detected with an endpoint, Azure Front Door will stop routing traffic to it until it comes back online.
How do you enable WAF in Azure Front Door?
You can enable WAF in Azure Front Door by creating a new WAF policy in the Azure portal, attaching it to the front door, and setting the mode to ‘Prevention’.
How can you increase website performance with Azure Front Door?
Azure Front Door can increase website performance by using split TCP and anycast protocol to provide global load balancing and accelerated content delivery.
What is the function of backend pools in Azure Front Door?
Backend pools are collections of similar backend resources. Azure Front Door uses them to route client requests to the appropriate resources.
How does Azure Front Door secure data?
Azure Front Door secures Data in transit using TLS encryption and provides security against DDoS attacks with the Web Application Firewall.
What are the benefits of using Azure Front Door?
Azure Front Door provides benefits such as improved application performance, increased reliability and high availability, URL-based routing, SSL offload, and security from DDoS attacks and common web vulnerabilities.
Can Azure Front Door be configured for automatic failover?
Yes, Azure Front Door supports automatic failover. If a backend is determined to be unhealthy, Front Door will automatically reroute traffic to healthy backends.
How do you add a custom domain to Azure Front Door?
You can add a custom domain to Azure Front Door by creating a CNAME record in your DNS provider that points to the Front Door’s azurefd.net domain.
Do health probes in Azure Front Door support HTTPS?
Yes, health probes in Azure Front Door do support HTTPS.
How does Azure Front Door handle SSL termination and certificate management?
Azure Front Door handles SSL termination at the edge close to the user, providing SSL offload to the backend, and it automatically manages the renewal and revoking of certificates.
What is the Azure Front Door SDK useful for?
The Azure Front Door SDK can be used to programmatically manage and configure Azure Front Door, such as creating or updating Front Door resources or managing WAF policies.