Hello, I have seen some questions on this before in 2019. Has there been any feature additions to allow active / passive configuration with Azure LB? https://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/b60801ed-5692-48f2-95fc-5f6e24ea09bd/active-passive-load-balancer-setup-in-azure?forum=WAVirtualMachinesVirtualNetwork

@CPO Thank you for reaching out to Microsoft Q&A. I understand that you want to know if Azure LB can do Active/Passive type load balancing. Azure Load Balancer does not have any additional feature that can do Active/Passive. Azure LB has no understanding of Active/Passive or Active/Active. From a Load Balancing point of view, it is simply a back end pool member answering the probe or not. It will be based on your configuration to make sure that you have an Active/Passive setup and that the Passive node does not respond to the probe and only the active one does. If the active responds to the probe as expected, then only it should handle the traffic. However, this configuration would be possible by deploying a Traffic manager in your architecture. You can route traffic through Traffic manger based on priority method . Hope this helps. Please let us know if you have any further questions and we will be glad to assist you further. Thank you! Remember: Please accept an answer if correct. Original posters help the community find answers faster by identifying the correct answer. Here is how . Want a reminder to come back and check responses? Here is how to subscribe to a notification.

Azure Load balancers only offer active/active load balancing between all endpoints. If you want active/passive you want to look at services such as Traffic Manager or Front Door, which allow you to configure load balancing strategies such as Active/Passive.

Active / Passive with Azure Load Balancer

Accepted answer

SaiKishor-MSFT 17,231 Reputation points

2021-12-08T17:23:33.257+00:00

@CPO Thank you for reaching out to Microsoft Q&A. I understand that you want to know if Azure LB can do Active/Passive type load balancing.

Azure Load Balancer does not have any additional feature that can do Active/Passive.

Azure LB has no understanding of Active/Passive or Active/Active. From a Load Balancing point of view, it is simply a back end pool member answering the probe or not. It will be based on your configuration to make sure that you have an Active/Passive setup and that the Passive node does not respond to the probe and only the active one does. If the active responds to the probe as expected, then only it should handle the traffic.

However, this configuration would be possible by deploying a Traffic manager in your architecture. You can route traffic through Traffic manger based on priority method. Hope this helps.

Please let us know if you have any further questions and we will be glad to assist you further. Thank you!

Remember:

Please accept an answer if correct. Original posters help the community find answers faster by identifying the correct answer. Here is how.

Want a reminder to come back and check responses? Here is how to subscribe to a notification.
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Carlos Chacon Chavarria 76 Reputation points

2022-01-21T01:29:17.907+00:00

thanks

what would be option when services are internal so Traffic Manager or Front Door does not apply?

in the last month I 2 customers are configuring some active passive private ips in different AZ and and go and say you know you can use Traffic Manager or Front Door but when they tell me their access points are private IPs I am speechless

so what would he workaround when a services is publish internally and customer has ER so they don't have public endpoints which work for Traffic Manager or Front Door

thanks

Ungureanu, Mihai 1 Reputation point

2023-07-17T12:10:38.26+00:00

I believe the explanation is inaccurate. Azure LB works in A-A mode, that is the meaning of

it is simply a back end pool member answering the probe or not

In other words, do not expect it to behave like pacemaker or some older cluster watches like Veritas that were "activating" virtual IPs on the NICs of one of the nodes.

Besides, I believe that in Azure (or in cloud in general) A/P doesn't make much sense, architecturally you should replace it with a "restart" concept. A VM with a consolidated image may "restart" against a volume and would obtain the same effect, in general.

There are cases where you might consider this "not good enough", for example if the startup time pushes the availability outside of its SLA. In this case you want a "hot standby", not a "passive". That's a different discussion, but tools like pacemaker are needed as far as I know.
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Active / Passive with Azure Load Balancer

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