For virtual machines we cannot talk about load balancer without talking about endpoints. Endpoints give you the possibility to specify the port (endpoint) that can be public accessed. For each endpoint you need to specify the public port, private port and protocol (TCP,UDP). The private and public port can be very useful when you want to redirect specific calls to different ports. If you don’t specify the endpoints for a virtual machine, the machine cannot be accessed from outside (for example when you host a web page and you need to have port 80 open).
For web and worker roles this load balancer is out of the box support. We could say that it is the same think for virtual machines also, but you need to make some custom configuration. You will need to specify that you will use the load balancer functionality when you create an endpoint. Once you create an endpoint that is load balanced, the only think that you will need is to specify to the second, 3rd … machine from that will be included in the load balancer the endpoint that use a load balancer set (“Add an endpoint to an existing load-balancer set”).
Direct server return is another feature of endpoints. It can be very useful when you have want each machine to response to the client directly, without the load balancer routing. In this way, once a client start to communicate with a machine, the connection will stick with only that virtual machine (stick connections) – useful when you have a DB on machines or you have an in-memory session that is not shared between machines.
Virtual network give you the possibility to create a private network formed from virtual machines from Windows Azure. When you need to share content between machines, this will be the best approach. Even if you have machines that are under the same subscription, you will not be able to access them using their private IP or name. You have almost the same access level from one machine to another as you would have machines under different subscription.
Because of this when you need to communicate between machines that are behind the same DNS name of public IP this will be the best approach. For example you will not be able to access a specific instance that is behind a load balancer to update content or call specific endpoints.
A virtual network can be created very easily from the Network tab. You have a lot of options from custom DNS names for specific machines to custom address spaces. Once a virtual network is created you can very easily create new virtual machines to it.
Remarks: You should take into account that you cannot add an existing virtual machine to a new virtual network. A fix for this problem is to stop and delete the machine without deleting the disk itself and recreate a new machine based on that disk
Not last, let’s talk a little about availability set. This is a pretty interesting setting. When you create two or more machines for the same purpose you don’t want the resources of the machine (memory, processor, and store) to be in the same rack. Why? If the rack will stop working that you will have both machines down and the load balancer will not be able to help you. In this case when you create a availability set you will have the guarantee that the machines under the same availability set will not be under the same rack. This will give you the availability of 99.95% that is offered by SLA.
The feature that I enjoy the most is the load balancer in combination with endpoints. It is a great feature that can help you a lot.
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