AZ-700 Question 168
Single answerYou manage an internal line-of-business application running on five virtual machines (VMs) within the same Azure region. The application listens on TCP port 8080 and must only be accessible to other internal resources in the same virtual network. You also need to ensure traffic flows evenly across all five VMs, with automatic health checks at layer 4. Which Azure load balancing solution should you implement for this scenario?
- A
Use an Azure Internal Load Balancer with a private front-end IP and load-balancing rules on TCP port 8080
- B
Use an Azure Public Load Balancer with a public IP address to distribute inbound traffic
- C
Use Azure Application Gateway with path-based routing for the internal clients
- D
Use Azure Traffic Manager to distribute traffic among the five VMs
Show answer and explanation
Correct answer: A
Explanation
In this scenario, an Azure Internal Load Balancer is the ideal choice because you only need layer 4 functionality for internal traffic distribution. It supports health probes to ensure requests are sent to healthy VMs, and it keeps traffic private within the virtual network. For more information, see the official Microsoft Azure Load Balancer documentation: https://learn.microsoft.com/azure/load-balancer.
- A. Correct.
Option 1 is correct. An Azure Internal Load Balancer is designed for layer 4 load balancing within Azure virtual networks. By assigning a private front-end IP and configuring the load balancing rules on TCP port 8080, you can evenly distribute traffic among VMs for internal-only scenarios.
- B. Incorrect.
Option 2 is incorrect. A Public Load Balancer would expose the service to the internet, which contradicts the requirement to only allow internal traffic. Public Load Balancers are more suited for external-facing applications.
- C. Incorrect.
Option 3 is incorrect. Azure Application Gateway operates at layer 7 and supports features like path-based routing, SSL offloading, and WAF. It introduces unnecessary complexity for a simple layer 4 requirement and is primarily used for web traffic (HTTP/HTTPS).
- D. Incorrect.
Option 4 is incorrect. Azure Traffic Manager is a DNS-based global load balancing solution intended for distributing traffic across multiple regions or endpoints. It doesn't handle actual data-plane flow in a single region for internal traffic.