This lab requires an Azure subscription. Your subscription type may affect the availability of features in this lab. You may change the region, but the steps are written using **East US**.
Your organization has a public website. You need to load balance incoming public requests across different virtual machines. You also need to provide images and videos from different virtual machines. You plan on implementing an Azure Load Balancer and an Azure Application Gateway. All resources are in the same region.
There are interactive lab simulations that you might find useful for this topic. The simulation lets you to click through a similar scenario at your own pace. There are differences between the interactive simulation and this lab, but many of the core concepts are the same. An Azure subscription is not required.
+ [Create and configure and Azure load balancer](https://mslabs.cloudguides.com/guides/AZ-700%20Lab%20Simulation%20-%20Create%20and%20configure%20an%20Azure%20load%20balancer). Create a virtual network, backend servers, load balancer, and then test the load balancer.
+ [Deploy Azure Application Gateway](https://mslabs.cloudguides.com/guides/AZ-700%20Lab%20Simulation%20-%20Deploy%20Azure%20Application%20Gateway). Create an application gateway, create virtual machines, create the backend pool, and test the gateway.
+ [Implement traffic management](https://mslabs.cloudguides.com/guides/AZ-104%20Exam%20Guide%20-%20Microsoft%20Azure%20Administrator%20Exercise%2010). Implement complete hub and spoke network including virtual machines, virtual networks, peering, load balancer, and application gateway.
In this task, you implement an Azure Load Balancer in front of the two Azure virtual machines in the virtual network. Load Balancers in Azure provide layer 4 connectivity across resources, such as virtual machines. Load Balancer configuration includes a front-end IP address to accept connections, a backend pool, and rules that define how connections should traverse the load balancer.
>**Note:** The Standard SKU provides a static IP address. Static IP addresses are assigned with the resource is created and released when the resource is deleted.
1. On the **Backend pools** tab, click **Add a backend pool** with the following settings (leave others with their default values). Click **Add** and then **Save**. Click **Next: Inbound rules**.
1. Select **+ Add**. Add a load balancing rule with the following settings (leave others with their default values). As you configure the rule use the informational icons to learn about each setting. When finished click **Save**.
1. Open another browser tab and navigate to the IP address. Verify that the browser window displays the message **Hello World from az104-06-vm0** or **Hello World from az104-06-vm1**.
1. Refresh the window to verify the message changes to the other virtual machine. This demonstrates the load balancer rotating through the virtual machines.
In this task, you implement an Azure Application Gateway in front of two Azure virtual machines. An Application Gateway provides layer 7 load balancing, Web Application Firewall (WAF), SSL termination, and end-to-end encryption to the resources defined in the backend pool. The Application Gateway routes images to one virtual machine and videos to the other virtual machine.
1. Click **Next : Backends >** and then **Add a backend pool**. Specify the following settings (leave others with their default values). When completed click **Add**.
1. Click **Add a backend pool**. This is the backend pool for **images**. Specify the following settings (leave others with their default values). When completed click **Add**.
1. Click **Add a backend pool**. This is the backend pool for **video**. Specify the following settings (leave others with their default values). When completed click **Add**.
1. In the **Path-based routing** section, select **Add multiple targets to create a path-based rule**. You will create two rules. Click **Add** after the first rule and then **Add** after the second rule.
> **Note**: Wait for the Application Gateway instance to be created. This will take approximately 5-10 minutes. While you wait consider reviewing some of the self-paced training links at the end of this page.
If you are working with **your own subscription** take a minute to delete the lab resources. This will ensure resources are freed up and cost is minimized. The easiest way to delete the lab resources is to delete the lab resource group.
Copilot can assist you in learning how to use the Azure scripting tools. Copilot can also assist in areas not covered in the lab or where you need more information. Open an Edge browser and choose Copilot (top right) or navigate to *copilot.microsoft.com*. Take a few minutes to try these prompts.
+ What tools are available to troubleshoot connections to an Azure Load Balancer?
+ What are the basic steps for configuring the Azure Application Gateway? Provide a high-level checklist.
+ Create a table highlighting three Azure load balancing solutions. For each solution show supported protocols, routing policies, session affinity, and TLS offloading.
+ [Improve application scalability and resiliency by using Azure Load Balancer](https://learn.microsoft.com/training/modules/improve-app-scalability-resiliency-with-load-balancer/). Discuss the different load balancers in Azure and how to choose the right Azure load balancer solution to meet your requirements.
+ [Load balance your web service traffic with Application Gateway](https://learn.microsoft.com/training/modules/load-balance-web-traffic-with-application-gateway/). Improve application resilience by distributing load across multiple servers and use path-based routing to direct web traffic.
+ Azure Load Balancer is an excellent choice for distributing network traffic across multiple virtual machines at the transport layer (OSI layer 4 - TCP and UDP).
+ Public Load Balancers are used to load balance internet traffic to your VMs. An internal (or private) load balancer is used where private IPs are needed at the frontend only.
+ The Basic load balancer is for small-scale applications that don't need high availability or redundancy. The Standard load balancer is for high performance and ultra-low latency.
+ Azure Application Gateway is a web traffic (OSI layer 7) load balancer that enables you to manage traffic to your web applications.
+ The Application Gateway Standard tier offers all the L7 functionality, including load balancing, The WAF tier adds a firewall to check for malicious traffic.
+ An Application Gateway can make routing decisions based on additional attributes of an HTTP request, for example URI path or host headers.
