What is Azure Application Gateway?

Azure Application Gateway is a reverse proxy with optional WAF (Web Application Firewall) capability to allow incoming connections from external sources. The Gateway operates at Layer 3, 4, and 7 for IP-based, TCP/UDP-based, URL-based, and Host Header-based routing.

When to use the Application Gateway?

Microsoft has multiple services to protect and accelerate your applications; they are used for different scenarios, depending on where your users are:

Microsoft provides for most Azure services an Service Level Agreements (SLA), where you can find the availability for that services. The availability has a rage from 99.9% to 100% or no range at all (for some free services).

“We guarantee that 99.95% of the time, the Azure … Service will successfully receive and respond to …”

The SLA describes Microsoft’s commitments for uptime and connectivity. It is also somewhat guaranteed, i.e., it is backed financially. It shows Microsoft will refund you when it fails the SLA, but it doesn’t back your business.

Most websites don’t need a dynamically generated page for every visitor; it is slow, expensive, and requires continuous updates to be secure. A static site is fast and reliable. I hear you thinking; this is old school, most websites are interactive and are using a CMS in some kind to manage their content.

Headless CMS

The solution for a static website is to make use of a headless CMS, like Hugo or Jekyll. Basascly, you generate a static site from content and a template, similar to what this blog is doing.