- Grasp the core load balancing concepts: how a load balancer acts as a traffic cop by distributing incoming requests to backend resources to maintain reliability and performance.
- Differentiate Azure’s main load balancing solutions: Azure Load Balancer (Layer 4), Application Gateway (Layer 7), Traffic Manager (DNS-based global routing), and Azure Front Door (global HTTP load balancing and acceleration).
- Choose the right service for your application based on traffic type, availability goals, latency requirements, and architecture constraints.

Tip: When evaluating which Azure load balancing service to use, first identify your traffic type (TCP/UDP vs. HTTP/HTTPS), whether you need global vs. regional routing, and whether you require application-layer features like WAF or URL-based routing.
Links and references
- Azure Load Balancer: https://learn.microsoft.com/azure/load-balancer/
- Azure Application Gateway: https://learn.microsoft.com/azure/application-gateway/
- Azure Traffic Manager: https://learn.microsoft.com/azure/traffic-manager/
- Azure Front Door: https://learn.microsoft.com/azure/frontdoor/