Microsoft’s Azure Traffic Manager was first introduced in 2013, but it’s come a long way since then. The tool lets admins control how user traffic is distributed in datacenters, with a range of endpoints. Traffic Manager currently supports Web Apps, cloud services and Azure VMs, as well as external apps.
On Wednesday Microsoft introduced even more functionality in the form a new Geographic Routing feature. It means users can direct traffic depending on the physical location of requests.
Azure Traffic Manager Geographic Routing Advantages
This functionality opens up new usage scenarios for admins. According to principal program manager Dilip Lukose, we can expect the following:
- “Customizing and localizing content for specific regions, enabling better user experience and engagement. As an example, an e-commerce site can localize the site content and merchandise items to users in a specific region.
- Knowing where the users are coming from makes it easier to implement mandates related to data sovereignty.”
Geographic Routing also has several different ways you can group traffic by region. These are:
- “World – any region
- Regional Grouping – Africa, Middle East, Australia/Pacific, etc.
- Country/Region – Ireland, Peru, Hong Kong SAR, etc.
- State / Province – USA–California, Australia–Queensland, Canada-Alberta, etc. (Note: This granularity level is supported only for states / provinces in Australia, Canada, UK, and USA)”
The feature is currently available for customers in all of the usual public cloud regions. Users of Azure Government, Azure Germany and Azure China will have to wait until May.
You can find more information about the tool on the Azure blog, as well as extensive guidance on setting up Geographic Routing.
