HomeBlogCloud ComputingAzure Front Door vs Application Gateway: Top Differences
Cloud platforms are an integral part of modern applications. They offer features like reliability, scalability, and security to the apps for reaching millions of users. Many cloud platforms are available in the market, including Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform, Amazon Web Services, etc. The networking services of the cloud play a crucial role in the optimal communication of services with each other. Microsoft Azure provides two services for network management: Azure Front Door and Azure Application Gateway. Learn more about Microsoft Azure Architect technologies and design and implement advanced infrastructure solutions in Azure.
In this article, we will compare Front Door vs. Application Gateway in terms of their features, Security and Compliance Considerations, Availability and Performance Benefits, Cost Comparison, and use cases.
Azure Front Door is a content delivery network solution provided by Microsoft that helps to provide static and dynamic web content to users with higher availability, lower latency, greater scale, and more secure manner across the globe.
Front Door can store images, videos, or any other files for your application and deliver them to the users at high speed. It uses global and local points of presence (PoPs) distributed worldwide and routes user requests to the closest and healthiest server for a faster experience. Front Door provides security with built-in DDoS protection and a Web Application Firewall.
Azure Application Gateway is a traffic manager and load balancer that helps route your application's traffic to a suitable destination. Load balancers mainly reduce the load on servers by calculating the amount of traffic that will route on each server. This enhances the availability and scalability of the application.
Application Gateway can also handle traffic based on the additional parameters of an HTTP request. For example, if a specific pool of servers handles the video-related APIs, then the ‘/videos’ incoming URL will route to the servers configured for videos. Load balancers mainly operate at the transport layer (OSI layer 4 - TCP and UDP).
Let’s compare the two services, i.e., front door vs. application gateway, based on some crucial parameters. This section will be critical in deciding which service to choose for your use case.
| Parameters | Front Door | Application Gateway |
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| Features |
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| Security and Compliance Considerations | When it comes to Azure Front Door, it provides security measures, including Web Application Firewall (WAF), DDoS Protection, SSL/TLS Encryption, and Traffic Analytics to ensure advanced security for the users and comply with industry standards like GDPR, HIPAA, and ISO certifications. | Azure Application Gateway secures users with a Web Application Firewall (WAF), SSL Termination, Authentication and Authorization, Logging, and Monitoring. Besides, It complies with the PCI DSS, OWASP, SOC, and HIPAA industry standards. |
| Availability and Performance Benefits |
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| Cost Comparison (Azure Front Door vs. Application Gateway pricing) | Azure Front Door offers two fixed pricing plans: Azure Front Door Standard, which is mainly for optimal content delivery and charges a monthly fee of $35, and Azure Front Door Premium, which adds features including Private Link, WAF, BOT protection, Microsoft Threat Intelligence (MTI), and security analytics to the Standard plan and comes with a monthly fee of $330. | Application Gateway provides variable pricing options for your usage: Fixed Scheme: $0.246 per gateway hour for Application Gateway and $0.443 for WAF Application Gateway. Capacity Unit Scheme: $0.008 per capacity unit-hour for Application Gateway and $0.0144 per capacity unit-hour for WAF Application Gateway |
Azure Front Door Pros:
Azure Application Gateway Cons:
Application Gateway Pros:
Application Gateway Cons:
Let's explore various use cases for Application Gateway and Front Door in optimizing web application delivery.
a. Azure Application Gateway
It is usually used when you expect many users in your apps or wish to manage web traffic based on incoming requests. Application Gateway balances the traffic across multiple servers and supports routing to a specific server based on request components. Besides, Application Gateway is also used when you need to host multiple apps with the same gateway patterns. Go for Cloud Computing training courses and build competency in managing cloud storage, databases, networking, security, and analytics.
b. Azure Front Door
It is usually employed where efficient delivery and high availability of the assets to the users. For example, let’s say you have a streaming application that must regularly render videos and images to the users. In this case, go ahead with Front Door as your Content Delivery Network.
This article covered the primary differences between Azure Application Gateway vs. Front Door. Both services act as a middleman between the server and the client. However, Front Door primarily deals with optimal data delivery and global load balancing, while Application Gateway is mainly concerned with application-level traffic management and security. The choice between the two largely depends on the application type and services you deliver to the users. Check out KnowledgeHut Microsoft Azure Architect technologies and learn to manage decisions for functional areas.
Both services offer different security features depending on your use case. The Front Door handles DDOS protection and WAF for security.
On the other hand, the Application Gateway provides Centralized Authentication and protects your app against DDOS attacks, Cross-Site Scripting, and SQL Injection.
Yes, we can use both services together as they do not serve the same purpose.
There is a fixed cost for Front Door, while the cost varies for the Application Gateway. Therefore, the cost-effectiveness of either service depends entirely on the specific use case.
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