AWS Global Accelerator vs Azure Front Door: A Comparison

As more businesses shift their operations to the cloud, they require reliable and efficient cloud networking solutions. Two popular options for load balancing and traffic management are AWS Global Accelerator and Azure Front Door. In this post, we'll compare the two services to help you determine which one is best suited for your organization's needs.

AWS Global Accelerator

AWS Global Accelerator is a fully managed service that uses Amazon's global network infrastructure to route traffic more efficiently to application endpoints in AWS regions or multiple AWS accounts. It offers enhanced multi-region resiliency and improved application performance for a wide range of use cases.

• Latency reduction: AWS Global Accelerator uses anycast IP addresses to direct user traffic to the optimal endpoint with minimal latency. It routes traffic over Amazon's global network with its private backbone and optimized network paths.
• High availability: With Global Accelerator, you can improve the availability of your internet-facing applications running in different regions. It automatically routes the traffic to the healthy application endpoints.
• Scalability: You can scale the service based on the requirements of your application's endpoint traffic. It does not affect the performance, and there is no need to update your client application or endpoint.

Azure Front Door

Azure Front Door is another cloud-native service from Microsoft. It provides intelligent traffic routing capabilities and application delivery optimization. It is a global load balancing service that offers speedy application performance and failover capabilities.

• Latency reduction: Azure Front Door uses anycast protocol and dynamic routing to connect clients to the nearest Front Door POP (point of presence) location. Front Door's multi-layered cache also helps accelerate application responses.
• High availability: Azure Front Door ensures high availability by using active-standby failover processes between endpoints. If a primary endpoint fails, Front Door automatically routes users to the secondary endpoint.
• Scalability: The Front Door service can scale to handle millions of HTTP requests per second, and it supports redirection and load balancing between external and internal endpoints

The Differences

While both services offer impressive latency reduction, high-availability, and scalability, there are some differences between them to consider.

• Pricing: AWS Global Accelerator has a more straightforward pricing model than Azure Front Door. With Global Accelerator, you pay for the number of accelerators created, while Front Door bills based on traffic processed.
• Supported protocols: AWS Global Accelerator supports both TCP and UDP, while Azure Front Door is limited to HTTP/S and WebSocket protocols.
• Networking Infrastructure: AWS Global Accelerator uses Amazon's private network, while Azure Front Door uses Microsoft's global network.

Conclusion

Both AWS Global Accelerator and Azure Front Door offer efficient cloud networking solutions, with similar features and benefits. However, the choice between them ultimately depends on specific business needs.

For businesses leveraging the AWS infrastructure, AWS Global Accelerator is an excellent choice with its straightforward pricing model and support for both TCP and UDP protocols. On the other hand, for organizations using the Azure platform, Azure Front Door is a worthy alternative that offers intelligent traffic routing with multi-layered cache and robust high-availability mechanisms.

References

1. AWS Global Accelerator
2. Azure Front Door
3. AWS Global Accelerator vs Azure Front Door by David Linthicum.