New Azure Front Door Service

Microsoft’s completely revamped Azure Front Door service has been released. Microsoft has brought many changes into the Azure Front Door service while also merging the Content Delivery Network (CDN) and Azure Web Application Firewall (WAF) services into Front Door. The new architecture allows legacy to cloud native apps to provide a cloud-first architecture. The updated service is now faster to deploy, provides a new rules engine, supports static and dynamic content delivery, has a simplified pricing model, includes DDoS protection, includes Private Link support, and protects both layers 3 and 4 traffic as well as layer 7 web application content. With the release of the new Azure Front Door service, the old Azure Front Door and Azure CDN services will be renamed “(classic)” and will be retired in the coming months. Details on these announcements can be found here

Why This Matters

  • Microsoft is simplifying global load balancing, content delivery, and security protections by merging several previous services into a unified service.
  • With these services merging, most customers building or migrating apps into Azure should be carefully considering using this service in their deployments.
  • While past services favored cloud native apps, this new service is designed for all apps including legacy apps, API services, IoT solutions, and more.