Front Door is too a load balancer

[toxic]

Hi in this question “Front Door” is considered a wrong answer because “it is not a load balancer”.

Microsoft however states that “Azure Front Door is an application delivery network that provides global load balancing and site acceleration for web applications.” and it does L7 load balancing between the origins in its origin groups.

Maybe in this particular question AGW may be more appropriate? But it still shouldn’t disqualify AFD because it “isn’t a load balancer”.

[Irene-TutorialsDojo]

Hello toxic,

Thank you for raising this point.

You’re correct that Azure Front Door provides Layer 7 load-balancing capabilities, and Microsoft does describe it as offering global load balancing for web applications. However, in the context of this question, “load balancer” refers to a regional load-balancing service that directly fronts backend Azure virtual machines and performs SSL termination within the application’s Azure network boundary. Azure Application Gateway fits this requirement because it is a dedicated Layer 7 load balancer designed to sit in front of VM-based web tiers and handle SSL/TLS termination for those backends.

Azure Front Door, while capable of SSL offloading and Layer 7 routing, functions as a global edge entry service that operates outside the virtual network and is typically used to distribute traffic across regions or origins rather than as the primary regional load balancer for VM tiers. Based on the stated requirement to deploy a load balancer supporting SSL termination for the application architecture, Azure Application Gateway is the most appropriate service, which is why Front Door is not selected in this scenario.

We hope this answers your query. Please let us know if you have any further questions or need additional clarification.

Cheers,

Irene @ Tutorials Dojo

[toxic]

Thank you for the detailed reply and I understand and agree that AGW is the appropriate answer here, but the published answer to the question still states that “Front Door is not a load balancer” which is misleading. It would be more appropriate to explain why FD is not the better solution though still technically being a load balancer 🙂

[Irene-TutorialsDojo]

Hello toxic,

Thank you for your feedback. You are correct that Azure Front Door is a load balancer. We have updated the explanation to clarify that while Front Door provides global load balancing, it is not the best fit for this scenario, which requires regional load balancing with SSL termination. The changes have been made and will reflect on the portal soon.

Thanks again for your input!

Cheers,

Irene @ Tutorials Dojo