Networking
The most complete set of networking capabilities to connect your on-premises infrastructure to the public cloud
Virtual Network
Windows Azure Virtual Network enables you to create a logically isolated section in Windows Azure and securely connect it to your on-premises datacenter or a single client machine using an IPsec connection. Virtual Network makes it easy for you to take advantage of Windows Azure’s scalable, on-demand infrastructure while providing connectivity to data and applications on-premises, including systems running on Windows Server, mainframes and UNIX.
When using Virtual Network you are backed by a 99.9% monthly SLA and have flexibility to enable a range of hybrid IT scenarios.
Use Virtual Network to:
Extend your datacenter
Virtual Network makes it easy to extend your datacenter using Windows Azure much in the same way that you would set up and connect to a remote branch office. You retain control over the network topology and configuration, and manage it in the same way you would your on-premises infrastructure.
Build distributed applications
Virtual Network makes it easier to build cloud applications hosted in a hybrid environment, maintaining secure connections with on-premises infrastructure without the creation of custom codes. For example, a web application hosted in Windows Azure can securely access an on-premise SQL Server database server or authenticate users against an on-premise Active Directory service.
Remotely debug your applications
With Virtual Network, you can create a direct connection between your local development machine and virtual machines hosted in Windows Azure, which allows you to troubleshoot and debug them using the same tools you would use for on-premises applications.
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Traffic Manager
Traffic Manager allows you to load balance incoming traffic across multiple hosted Windows Azure services whether they’re running in the same datacenter or across different datacenters around the world. By effectively managing traffic, you can ensure high performance, availability and resiliency of your applications. Traffic Manager provides you a choice of three load balancing methods: performance, failover, or round robin.
Use Traffic Manager to:
Ensure high availability for your applications
Traffic Manager enables you to improve the availability of your critical applications by monitoring your hosted services in Windows Azure and providing automatic failover capabilities when a service goes down.
Run responsive applications
Windows Azure allows you to run services in datacenters located around the globe. By serving end-users with the hosted service that is closest to them in terms of network latency, Traffic Manager can improve the responsiveness of your applications and content delivery times.
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