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Tutorial: Create a Traffic Manager Linked Record using the Azure portal

In this tutorial, you create a Traffic Manager Linked Record in Azure DNS. A Traffic Manager Linked Record connects a DNS record set directly to an Azure Traffic Manager profile. When a client queries this record, Azure DNS resolves the Traffic Manager profile internally and returns endpoint IP addresses directly—no intermediate CNAME hop to trafficmanager.net is required.

Important

Traffic Manager Linked Records is currently in PREVIEW. See the Supplemental Terms of Use for Microsoft Azure Previews for legal terms that apply to Azure features that are in beta, preview, or otherwise not yet released into general availability.

This approach is the recommended way to associate DNS records with Traffic Manager profiles. For a comparison with alias records, see Traffic Manager Linked Records overview.

In this tutorial, you learn how to:

  • Create a virtual network and web server virtual machines.
  • Create a Traffic Manager profile with external endpoints.
  • Create a Traffic Manager Linked Record in an Azure DNS zone.
  • Test the Traffic Manager Linked Record.

If you don't have an Azure subscription, create a free account before you begin.

Prerequisites

  • An Azure account with an active subscription.
  • A domain name hosted in Azure DNS. If you don't have an Azure DNS zone, you can create a DNS zone, then delegate your domain to Azure DNS.

Note

In this tutorial, contoso.com is used as an example domain name. Replace contoso.com with your own domain name.

Sign in to Azure

Sign in to the Azure portal.

Register the Microsoft.Network resource provider

To create Traffic Manager Linked Records, you must register the Microsoft.Network resource provider. If the DNS zone and the Traffic Manager profile are in different subscriptions, both subscriptions must be registered.

az provider register --namespace Microsoft.Network

For more information, see Resolve errors for resource provider registration.

Create the network infrastructure

Create a virtual network and subnet to place your web servers in.

  1. In the Azure portal, search for virtual network in the search box at the top and select Virtual networks from the results.

  2. In Virtual networks, select + Create.

  3. On the Basics tab, enter or select the following information:

    Setting Value
    Project Details
    Subscription Select your Azure subscription.
    Resource Group Select Create new, enter test-rg, and select OK.
    Instance details
    Name Enter vnet-1.
    Region Select your region.

  4. Select the IP Addresses tab and configure the address space:

    Setting Value
    IPv4 address space Enter 10.10.0.0/16.

  5. Select + Add subnet and enter the following:

    Setting Value
    Subnet name Enter subnet-1.
    Subnet address range Enter 10.10.0.0/24.

  6. Select Add, then select Review + create, and then select Create.

Create web server virtual machines

Create two Ubuntu virtual machines to use as web server endpoints.

Create the virtual machines

  1. In the Azure portal, search for virtual machine and select Virtual machines.

  2. Select + Create, then select Azure virtual machine.

  3. On the Basics tab, enter or select the following values:

    Setting Value
    Project Details
    Subscription Select your Azure subscription.
    Resource Group Select test-rg.
    Instance details
    Virtual machine name Enter vm-1.
    Region Select (US) East US.
    Availability options Select No infrastructure redundancy required.
    Security type Select Standard.
    Image Select Ubuntu Server 24.04 LTS - x64 Gen2.
    Size Select your preferred VM size.
    Administrator account
    Authentication type Select SSH public key.
    Username Enter a username.
    SSH public key source Select Generate new key pair.
    Key pair name Enter a name for the key pair.
    Inbound port rules
    Public inbound ports Select None.

  4. Select the Networking tab and enter the following:

    Setting Value
    Virtual network Select vnet-1.
    Subnet Select subnet-1.
    Public IP Select Create new, enter public-ip-1, and select Standard SKU.
    NIC network security group Select Basic.
    Public inbound ports Select Allow selected ports.
    Select inbound ports Select HTTP (80) and HTTPS (443).

  5. Select Review + create, and then select Create.

  6. Repeat the previous steps to create a second virtual machine named vm-2 with a public IP named public-ip-2.

Wait for both deployments to complete before continuing.

Note

To run commands on the virtual machines without SSH, use the Run command feature in the Azure portal. For SSH access from the internet, you must add an inbound NSG rule. For more information, see Azure Bastion.

Install the NGINX web server

Install NGINX on both virtual machines using the Run command feature.

  1. In the Azure portal, search for virtual machine and select Virtual machines.

  2. Select vm-1.

  3. In the left menu under Operations, select Run command.

  4. Select RunShellScript, enter the following command, and select Run:

    sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install -y nginx && echo 'Hello World from vm-1' | sudo tee /var/www/html/index.html

  5. Wait for the command to complete.

  6. Repeat for vm-2, using this command:

    sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install -y nginx && echo 'Hello World from vm-2' | sudo tee /var/www/html/index.html

Add DNS labels to the public IP addresses

Traffic Manager requires DNS name labels on public IP addresses used as Azure endpoints.

  1. In the Azure portal, search for test-rg and select the resource group.

  2. Select the public-ip-1 public IP address.

  3. Under Settings, select Configuration.

  4. Enter vm-1-tmlink in the DNS name label field.

  5. Select Save.

  6. Note the full DNS name value (for example, vm-1-tmlink.eastus.cloudapp.azure.com) and the IP address for later use.

  7. Repeat for public-ip-2, using the DNS name label vm-2-tmlink. Note the IP address.

Create a Traffic Manager profile

  1. In the Azure portal, search for Traffic Manager profile and select Traffic Manager profiles.

  2. Select + Create.

  3. On the Create Traffic Manager profile page, enter or select the following:

    Setting Value
    Name Enter tm-profile.
    Routing method Select Priority.
    Record type Select A.
    Subscription Select your Azure subscription.
    Resource group Select test-rg.

    Note

    The Record type sets the Strictly Typed Profile value for the profile, locking it to a specific DNS record type. Select A for IPv4 address records, AAAA for IPv6 address records, or CNAME for canonical name records. This value can't be changed after the profile is created.

  4. Select Create.

  5. After deployment completes, select Go to resource.

Add endpoints to the Traffic Manager profile

  1. On the tm-profile Traffic Manager profile page, select Endpoints under Settings in the left menu.

  2. Select + Add and enter the following for the first endpoint:

    Setting Value
    Type Select External endpoint.
    Name Enter tmendpoint-1.
    Fully qualified domain name (FQDN) or IP Enter the IP address for public-ip-1 noted previously.
    Priority Enter 1.

  3. Select Add.

  4. Select + Add again, and enter the following for the second endpoint:

    Setting Value
    Type Select External endpoint.
    Name Enter tmendpoint-2.
    Fully qualified domain name (FQDN) or IP Enter the IP address for public-ip-2 noted previously.
    Priority Enter 2.

  5. Select Add.

Both endpoints should show as Online after Traffic Manager completes its health checks. This may take a few minutes.

Create a Traffic Manager Linked Record

Now create the Traffic Manager Linked Record in your DNS zone.

  1. In the Azure portal, search for your DNS zone (for example, contoso.com) and select it from the results.

  2. On the Overview page of your DNS zone, select + Record set.

  3. In the Add record set pane, enter or select the following:

    Setting Value
    Name Leave empty to create a record at the zone apex, or enter a subdomain name such as www.
    Type Select A.
    Enable Traffic Management (Preview) Select the checkbox.
    Choose a subscription Select the subscription that contains your Traffic Manager profile.
    Traffic Manager Profile Select tm-profile from the dropdown.

    Note

    The record TTL is inherited from the Traffic Manager profile and cannot be set here.

  4. Select OK.

The new A record appears in the DNS zone record list. The Type column shows A with a Traffic Manager icon or label indicating it's a linked record.

Note

DNS queries to your Traffic Manager Linked Record are counted toward your Traffic Manager profile billing. For more information, see Traffic Manager pricing.

Test the Traffic Manager Linked Record

  1. Open a web browser and navigate to your domain name (for example, contoso.com). You should see the NGINX welcome page with the text Hello World from vm-1, because Traffic Manager routes traffic to vm-1 based on its higher priority.

  2. Close the browser. In the Azure portal, navigate to the vm-1 virtual machine and select Stop to shut it down.

  3. Wait a few minutes for Traffic Manager to detect the endpoint as unhealthy. You can monitor endpoint health on the Endpoints page of the tm-profile Traffic Manager profile.

  4. Open a new browser and navigate to contoso.com again. You should now see Hello World from vm-2, confirming that Traffic Manager has failed over to the secondary endpoint.

Clean up resources

When you no longer need the resources created in this tutorial, delete the resource group to remove all of them:

  1. In the Azure portal, search for test-rg and select it.
  2. On the Overview page, select Delete resource group.
  3. Enter test-rg to confirm, and then select Delete.

Also remove the Traffic Manager Linked Record from your DNS zone:

  1. In the Azure portal, navigate to your DNS zone (for example, contoso.com).
  2. On the Overview page, select the record created in this tutorial.
  3. Select Delete, and then confirm by selecting Yes.

Next steps

In this tutorial, you created a Traffic Manager Linked Record to route apex domain traffic through Traffic Manager, returning IP addresses directly without an intermediate CNAME resolution.

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