Microsoft Certified: Azure Fundamentals (AZ-900) Practice Exam

In Azure, what directly helps in managing internal and external traffic to applications?

1. Network Security Group

2. Azure Load Testing

3. Azure Load Balancer

4. Azure Policy

The correct answer is: Azure Load Balancer

The Azure Load Balancer is designed specifically to manage and distribute incoming internal and external traffic to applications. It ensures high availability and scalability by distributing workloads across multiple servers or virtual machines. When a user sends a request to an application, the load balancer assesses the current activity level on the backend servers and routes the traffic to the server best able to handle it, which improves performance and prevents any single server from becoming a bottleneck. Network Security Groups do play a vital role in managing access and providing firewall-like capabilities for controlling the flow of network traffic based on rules, but they do not handle the distribution of traffic. Azure Load Testing, on the other hand, focuses on testing the performance and scalability of applications rather than managing traffic. Azure Policy is utilized for governance and compliance within Azure resources but does not directly relate to traffic management.