What is Azure Front Door?

Azure Front Door was first released as a Private Preview in September 2018, and went into General Availability (GA) in April 2019.

Since its release it has gone through some changes to the service we see today.

What is Azure Front Door?

Azure Front Door is a global, secure application entry point that accelerates content delivery and protects web applications from modern threats.  It combines things like dynamic and static content acceleration (CDN), global load balancing, zero trust aligned security and built in distribution denial of service (DDoS) mitigation. 

Azure Front Door uses Microsoft’s edge network in 100+ locations to ensure user traffic always takes the lowest latency path to your application, whether workloads run in Azure, hybrid, or multi-cloud. 

Azure Front Door Standard vs Azure Front Door Premium

Azure Front Door currently comes in two tiers, Standard and Premium.  They are both built on the same modern architecture, however the key difference lies in the security features and how private you want your application origins to be.  

With Azure Front Door Standard you can: 

• Deliver and accelerate static and dynamic content using Microsoft’s global edge network
• Use custom routing rules to direct traffic to the best performing backend
• Load balance across multiple origins for high availability
• Enable custom Web Application Firewall (WAF) rules
• Protect against global network-level DDoS attacks (always on)
• Gain performance insights through detailed traffic reporting

This is very powerful and can improve performance and availability for most public facing applications. 

The premium tier builds on everything Standard is and unlocks advanced security and Zero Trust capabilities: 

• Managed rule sets for WAF based on the OWASP standards
• Advanced Bot Protection, helping defend against malicious automation
• Private Link support, so your application backends never need to be publicly reachable
• Security analytics with deeper threat detection
• Integration with Microsoft Entra ID for application-level access control scenarios

Is Azure Front Door a CDN?

Azure Front Door is a CDN, but it’s also capable of so much more than just that. Azure Front Door can provide you with a globally distributed edge network that accelerates static and dynamic content, ensuring fast and reliable access for users worldwide. 

It also provides capabilities like dynamic site acceleration for APIs and web apps, global load balancing, DDoS protection and web application firewall (WAF) integration.  

So while Azure Front Door provides enterprise grade CDN capabilities it’s true super power is acting like a front door to your applications, accelerating performance, improving availability, and defending against attacks at the edge. 

Is Azure Front Door a firewall?

Azure Front Door is not a firewall in the traditional sense. You don’t use it to block ports or segment your networks.  What it does do though is act as the first line of defence for your applications on the public internet. 

Its main purpose is to deliver and accelerate your content across the world. As part of its functionality Azure Front Door inspects traffic as it arrives, stops bad actors at the edge and only allows legitimate requests to reach your app.  

That said, Azure Front Door isn’t the full security story.  It protects the application at the edge, but not deep inside the network.  For a complete Zero Trust approach, organisations still pair it with services like Azure Firewall, network segmentation and threat monitoring. 

How Microsoft uses Azure Front Door

Azure Front Door isn’t just a service that Microsoft offers, it’s the technology that Microsoft uses to help provide some of the biggest and most demanding platforms on the planet.  When you dive into an Xbox multiplayer session, or try and hit a Microsoft website, or the Azure Portal your session request is being steered through Azure Front Door’s global edge network. 

Conclusion

In conclusion, Azure Front Door has evolved significantly since its Private Preview, becoming a powerful tool for modern web application delivery and security.

Leveraging Microsoft's expansive global network, it caters to businesses of all sizes, offering intelligent traffic routing, load balancing, and robust security features such as DDoS protection and Web Application Firewall (WAF).