Enhancing Application Delivery with F5 NGINXaaS for Azure: ADC-as-a-Service Redefined

Application Delivery Controllers as a Service (ADCaaS) play a critical role in delivering applications securely, efficiently, and seamlessly--from load balancing and traffic optimization to advanced observability and infrastructure automation.

For organizations using Microsoft Azure, F5 NGINXaaS for Azure provides enhanced performance, availability, visibility, security, and automation capabilities. It offers a fully managed, highly scalable, and highly customizable ADCaaS solution in Azure designed to meet the needs of an organization’s cloud-native applications.

 

What is F5 NGINXaaS for Azure?

F5 NGINXaaS for Azure is a partner ecosystem’s ADCaaS solution jointly developed by F5 and Microsoft and natively integrated into Azure cloud platform. F5 NGINXaaS is available from the Azure Marketplace, and it provides application delivery services that enhance application performance, availability, security, and observability in Azure’s public cloud environment.

By combining F5’s application delivery expertise with the flexibility and scalability of Azure, F5 NGINXaaS bridges the gap between general-purpose ADCaaS capabilities and advanced, highly unique application requirements.

 

 

Let’s take a closer look at how NGINXaaS for Azure enhances your application delivery infrastructure.

 

Intelligent Load Balancing for Optimal Performance

One of the major strengths of F5 NGINXaaS for Azure lies in its intelligent, adaptive load balancing capabilities. For instance, the "least time" algorithm ensures that requests are routed to the fastest available backend servers, improving application response times and optimizing resource utilization.

F5 NGINXaaS also excels in handling dynamic environments with zero-downtime reconfigurations. Support for dynamic configuration updates, application topology changes (such as adding or removing backend instances) are processed without traffic flow interruptions. This ensures a consistent, smooth user experience – even during sudden traffic surges or service failures.

In addition, F5 NGINXaaS enables advanced traffic management scenarios and use cases--such as blue-green and canary deployments, A/B testing, and rate limiting--out-of-the-box. This ensures a seamless user experience during rollouts of new releases of an application or extremely high request rates.

 

Enhanced Observability for Real-Time Insights

F5 NGINXaaS for Azure  observability features include more than 200 real-time metrics for in-depth monitoring and troubleshooting. These metrics provide granular insights into traffic patterns, application health, and user experience–all from a single interface, whether you use Azure Monitor or third-party integrations such as Grafana.

 

Programmability for Customized Application Delivery

Programmability is a key differentiator when choosing an ADCaaS, especially for organizations requiring highly tailored solutions. F5 NGINXaaS’ programmable data plane with embedded NGINX JavaScript (njs) makes it possible to unlock virtually unlimited possibilities in customizing application behavior. Organizations can create bespoke configurations that adhere to unique business requirements, such as custom request routing rules or advanced security policies.

 

Technology Consolidation and Azure Integration 

F5 NGINXaaS for Azure offers a unified tool that supports both L4 and L7 traffic management along with enhanced web application firewall (WAF) protection from OWASP Top 10 security risks out-of-the-box using the default policy supplied.

Beyond its integrated functionality, F5 NGINXaaS works seamlessly with core Azure services such as Azure Key Vault, Azure Monitor, and Azure Entra, simplifying the technology stack and optimizing operational workflows.

 

Use Cases: When and Where F5 NGINXaaS for Azure Excels

F5 NGINXaaS for Azure is ideal for medium to large-scale Azure cloud environments supporting scalable, dynamic cloud-native workloads. Its advanced capabilities make it an excellent choice for:

• High-Traffic Cloud-Native App Delivery: Applications requiring advanced load-balancing algorithms to handle many concurrent connections efficiently in an agile Azure cloud environment.
• Distributed Applications in Kubernetes: Azure Kubernetes Services (AKS) single- and multi-cluster deployments for enhanced performance, observability, and protection, as well as distributed load balancing, failover, and disaster recovery scenarios, ensuring seamless user experience.
• API Communications: Scenarios requiring granular control over API traffic with programmability and integrated API security.

 

How to Deploy and Configure F5 NGINXaaS

You can find F5 NGINXaaS on the Azure marketplace.

We have also curated a workshop consisting of self-paced lab exercises to help you get up and running quickly with F5 NGINXaaS for Azure. This workshop is designed for cloud and platform architects, DevOps, and SREs to learn more about how F5 NGINXaaS for Azure works - how it is configured, deployed, monitored, and managed.

Using various Azure Resources like virtual machines (VMs), containers, Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) clusters, and Azure networking, you will deploy cloud applications and configure F5 NGINXaaS to deliver them using various real-world scenarios.

 

Azure Network Build and NGINX for Azure Overview Lab

We recommend starting your F5 NGINXaaS journey with the following lab: Azure Network Build and NGINX for Azure Overview.

In this lab, you will be adding and configuring the Azure components needed for the workshop. This will require a few network resources, a Network Security Group and a Public IP to allow incoming traffic to your F5 NGINX for Azure workshop resource. You will also deploy the F5 NGINXaaS resource and explore the product with a quick overview of what it is and how to deploy it.

During the lab, you will:

• Setup your Azure Resource Group for the workshop
• Setup your Azure Virtual Network, Subnets, and Network Security Group for inbound traffic
• Create a Public IP and user-assigned managed identity to access F5 NGINXaaS for Azure
• Deploy an F5 NGINXaaS resource
• Explore F5 NGINXaaS for Azure
• Create an initial F5 NGINXaaS configuration for testing
• Create Log Analytics workspace to collect F5 NGINXaaS error and access logs

Upon completion of this lab exercise, you will develop a foundational understanding of what F5 NGINXaaS is, its capabilities, and how it integrates into Azure environments. You will also gain practical experience in configuring Azure resources for deploying F5 NGINXaaS, as well as creating the basic application delivery configuration.

 

Conclusion

F5 NGINXaaS for Azure takes application delivery to the next level. By unlocking advanced scenarios and use cases powered by flexible programmability, enhanced customization, better scaling, and improved observability technologies – F5 NGINXaaS offers a tailored ADCaaS solution that brings agility, flexibility, and reliability to your Azure-based applications.