Need advice about which tool to choose?Ask the StackShare community!

Azure CDN

58
90
+ 1
2
Azure Front Door

19
51
+ 1
0
Add tool

Azure CDN vs Azure Front Door: What are the differences?

Azure CDN (Content Delivery Network) and Azure Front Door are both services offered by Microsoft Azure that provide highly scalable and secure content delivery solutions. Here are the key differences between the two.

  1. Traffic Routing: Azure CDN primarily focuses on caching and delivering static content like images, CSS, and JavaScript files from edge locations close to the end-user. It uses the nearest edge location to serve the content, reducing latency and optimizing performance. On the other hand, Azure Front Door is designed for dynamic content and supports intelligent routing based on various factors like latency, health probes, and endpoint weighting. It can route traffic to different backend pools and provides flexibility in handling different application scenarios.

  2. Protocol Support: Azure CDN supports a wide range of protocols including HTTP, HTTPS, and HTTP/2. It can also be configured to enable WebSocket support. In contrast, Azure Front Door further expands the protocol support by additionally providing WebSockets, Server Name Indication (SNI), and WebSocket routing capabilities. This makes it more suitable for modern web applications that rely on real-time bidirectional communication.

  3. Security: Azure CDN provides some security features like content protection, token authentication, and SSL/TLS encryption. However, Azure Front Door offers enhanced security capabilities including Web Application Firewall (WAF) integration and integrated DDoS protection. It acts as a protective layer that can help defend against common web application vulnerabilities and protect the backends from malicious traffic.

  4. Global Load Balancing: Azure CDN does not provide native support for global load balancing across different regions. It primarily focuses on content caching and delivery. In contrast, Azure Front Door is specifically designed for global load balancing and enables traffic distribution across multiple regions, allowing for high availability and improved performance by directing users to the nearest healthy backend.

  5. Analytics and Monitoring: Azure CDN provides basic analytics and monitoring capabilities to track CDN usage and performance through Azure Monitor and Azure CDN Reports. Azure Front Door, on the other hand, offers more advanced analytics and monitoring features. It integrates with Azure Monitor and Azure Log Analytics, providing detailed insights into traffic patterns, latency, and error rates. This enables better troubleshooting and performance optimization.

  6. Traffic Management and Failover: Azure CDN does not provide built-in traffic management and failover capabilities. It relies on DNS for routing. In contrast, Azure Front Door includes advanced traffic management features like weighted routing, session affinity, and URL-based routing. It also supports automatic failover and can intelligently switch between backend pools or endpoints based on health probes and availability.

In summary, Azure CDN focuses on content caching and delivery from edge locations, whereas Azure Front Door provides advanced routing capabilities, global load balancing, enhanced security features, and deeper analytics and monitoring options for dynamic content delivery and application acceleration.

Get Advice from developers at your company using StackShare Enterprise. Sign up for StackShare Enterprise.
Learn More
Pros of Azure CDN
Pros of Azure Front Door
  • 2
    Low Latency
    Be the first to leave a pro

    Sign up to add or upvote prosMake informed product decisions

    What is Azure CDN?

    It lets you reduce load times, save bandwidth, and speed responsiveness—whether you’re developing or managing websites or mobile apps, or encoding and distributing streaming media, gaming software, firmware updates, or IoT endpoints.

    What is Azure Front Door?

    The scalable and secure entry point for the fast delivery of your global applications. It enables you to define, manage, and monitor the global routing for your web traffic by optimizing for best performance and instant global failover for high availability.

    Need advice about which tool to choose?Ask the StackShare community!

    What companies use Azure CDN?
    What companies use Azure Front Door?
    See which teams inside your own company are using Azure CDN or Azure Front Door.
    Sign up for StackShare EnterpriseLearn More

    Sign up to get full access to all the companiesMake informed product decisions

    What tools integrate with Azure CDN?
    What tools integrate with Azure Front Door?

    Sign up to get full access to all the tool integrationsMake informed product decisions

    What are some alternatives to Azure CDN and Azure Front Door?
    CloudFlare
    Cloudflare speeds up and protects millions of websites, APIs, SaaS services, and other properties connected to the Internet.
    Akamai
    If you've ever shopped online, downloaded music, watched a web video or connected to work remotely, you've probably used Akamai's cloud platform. Akamai helps businesses connect the hyperconnected, empowering them to transform and reinvent their business online. We remove the complexities of technology, so you can focus on driving your business faster forward.
    Amazon CloudFront
    Amazon CloudFront can be used to deliver your entire website, including dynamic, static, streaming, and interactive content using a global network of edge locations. Requests for your content are automatically routed to the nearest edge location, so content is delivered with the best possible performance.
    MaxCDN
    The MaxCDN Content Delivery Network efficiently delivers your site’s static file through hundreds of servers instead of slogging through a single host. This "smart route" technology distributes your content to your visitors via the city closest to them.
    Incapsula
    Through an application-aware, global content delivery network (CDN), Incapsula provides any website and web application with best-of-breed security, DDoS protection, load balancing and failover solutions.
    See all alternatives