Azure Application Gateway vs. AWS Application Load Balancer
When it comes to cloud architecture, load balancing is one of the most crucial aspects. It ensures that your applications are running smoothly by distributing the network traffic across multiple servers or instances. Two of the most popular cloud providers, Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services (AWS), offer their own load balancing services – Azure Application Gateway and AWS Application Load Balancer. In this post, we'll compare both of these services based on various parameters and help you decide which one suits your needs better.
Overview
Azure Application Gateway and AWS Application Load Balancer (ALB) are both Layer 7 load balancers. This means that they work at the application layer of the OSI model, which allows them to intelligently distribute traffic based on routing rules and content-based routing. Both services offer features like SSL offloading, multi-site routing, and web application firewall.
Azure Application Gateway
Azure Application Gateway is a fully managed Application Delivery Controller (ADC) service that offers features like SSL termination, web application firewall, URL-based routing, and session affinity. It can handle up to 20,000 requests per second and supports HTTP and HTTPS protocols. Azure Application Gateway also integrates with Azure Virtual Machines, Azure Kubernetes Service, and Azure App Service.
AWS Application Load Balancer
AWS Application Load Balancer is a fully managed Layer 7 load balancer that offers features like content-based routing, SSL termination, and health monitoring. It can handle up to 1 million requests per second and supports both HTTP and HTTPS protocols. AWS ALB directly integrates with AWS services like EC2 instances, ECS containers, and Lambda functions.
Comparison
Now that we've got an overview of both services, let's compare them based on various parameters.
Performance
When it comes to performance, AWS Application Load Balancer outshines Azure Application Gateway. AWS ALB can handle up to 1 million requests per second, while Azure Application Gateway can handle up to 20,000 requests per second.
Availability
Both services offer high availability with automatic failover. However, Azure Application Gateway offers more granular control over traffic routing and allows you to define routing rules based on the URL path, HTTP headers, or host headers.
Pricing
Azure Application Gateway offers a more cost-effective solution, especially for small-scale deployments. It has a lower starting cost and offers pay-as-you-go pricing, which means that you pay only for the resources you use. AWS Application Load Balancer has a higher starting cost and offers a complicated pricing model that is based on the number of load balancer hours, data processed, and per LCU (Load Balancer Capacity Units).
Integration
Both services integrate with their respective cloud providers, but Azure Application Gateway offers more integration options. It integrates with Azure Virtual Machines, Azure Kubernetes Service, and Azure App Service. AWS Application Load Balancer integrates with EC2 instances, ECS containers, and Lambda functions.
Conclusion
Both Azure Application Gateway and AWS Application Load Balancer are great options for load balancing in your cloud architecture. However, depending on your specific requirements, one might be a better fit for you than the other. Azure Application Gateway is more cost-effective and offers granular routing control, making it a good choice for small-scale deployments. AWS Application Load Balancer, on the other hand, outperforms Azure Application Gateway in terms of performance and offers deeper integration with AWS services.