--- title: Windows Azure Traffic Manager Explained | daily.dev description: Windows Azure Traffic Manager, a distributed DNS-based service for distributing traffic across Cloud Services and VMs using failover, performance, or... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/windows-azure-traffic-manager-explained-lmirprnvr twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Windows Azure Traffic Manager Explained | daily.dev og:description: Windows Azure Traffic Manager, a distributed DNS-based service for distributing traffic across Cloud Services and VMs using failover, performance, or... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/windows-azure-traffic-manager-explained-lmirprnvr og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/lmIRpRNvr.png og:image:alt: Windows Azure Traffic Manager Explained og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Windows Azure Traffic Manager Explained **[Maarten Balliauw](https://daily.dev/sources/maartenballiauw)** · 4 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary Windows Azure Traffic Manager, a distributed DNS-based service for distributing traffic across Cloud Services and VMs using failover, performance, or round-robin profiles, is explained following its surfacing in the Azure management portal as a preview. The service had existed for over two years but recently gained support for VMs in addition to cloud services. The author argues cloud failures should be treated as a scaling-to-zero event rather than a catastrophe, and shares that MyGet uses Traffic Manager as a failover mechanism to a dormant North Europe datacenter to avoid DNS propagation delays during outages, calling it the most stable Azure service they've used. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Questions this post answers ### What traffic routing methods does Windows Azure Traffic Manager support? Windows Azure Traffic Manager supports three routing profiles: failover, which sends all traffic to one service until it fails and then redirects to a backup; performance, which routes users to the closest datacenter based on network proximity; and round-robin, which distributes requests evenly across the defined services. It works as a distributed DNS service across Windows Azure datacenters. _Weigh failover, performance, and round-robin tradeoffs for multi-region apps with architecture takes curated on daily.dev._ ### Can Windows Azure Traffic Manager route traffic to virtual machines, not just cloud services? Yes, Windows Azure Traffic Manager gained the ability to distribute traffic across VMs in addition to Cloud Services, enabling scenarios like a SharePoint farm deployed across multiple datacenters with geographic traffic distribution. Previously the service only supported routing between cloud services. _Track incremental Azure service expansions like this one through daily.dev when planning multi-datacenter deployments._ ### Why would you set up a failover datacenter with no active deployment in it? Pointing Traffic Manager failover at an empty datacenter avoids downtime caused by slow DNS propagation during an outage. MyGet's production app mapped its domain to a Traffic Manager endpoint so that if the West Europe datacenter failed, a new deployment could be spun up quickly in North Europe, accepting brief downtime rather than waiting on DNS changes to propagate. _Compare real failover strategies like this one for cloud resilience planning on daily.dev._ ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Managed DevOps Pools: Scale Agents Without Burning Money — Daily DevOps & .NET](https://daily.dev/posts/managed-devops-pools-scale-agents-without-burning-money-daily-devops-net-4kytogtxv) · Daily DevOps & .NET · 1 upvotes · 0 comments - [Azure IaaS: Keep critical applications running with built-in resiliency at scale](https://daily.dev/posts/azure-iaas-keep-critical-applications-running-with-built-in-resiliency-at-scale-uyusj0qjt) · Microsoft Azure · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Meet Brain, the AI that decides when Azure is officially down](https://daily.dev/posts/meet-brain-the-ai-that-decides-when-azure-is-officially-down-go1rusyoj) · The New Stack · 1 upvotes · 0 comments - [Azure outage disrupts VMs and identity services for over 10 hours](https://daily.dev/posts/azure-outage-disrupts-vms-and-identity-services-for-over-10-hours-eczluyrfq) · InfoWorld · 0 upvotes · 1 comments - [From Static to Adaptive Traffic Control in Airbnb’s Key-Value Store to Handle Traffic Spikes](https://daily.dev/posts/from-static-to-adaptive-traffic-control-in-airbnb-s-key-value-store-to-handle-traffic-spikes-kjgvz711f) · InfoQ · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#cloud](https://daily.dev/tags/cloud), [#azure](https://daily.dev/tags/azure), [#dns](https://daily.dev/tags/dns) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/windows-azure-traffic-manager-explained-lmirprnvr) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Windows Azure Traffic Manager Explained","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/windows-azure-traffic-manager-explained-lmirprnvr","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/windows-azure-traffic-manager-explained-lmirprnvr"},"datePublished":"2026-10-04T13:05:09.270Z","dateModified":"2026-10-04T13:07:30.862Z","description":"Windows Azure Traffic Manager, a distributed DNS-based service for distributing traffic across Cloud Services and VMs using failover, performance, or...","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/a1d757b9ee9618018b5ff8f30aaae88f?_a=AQAEuop","thumbnailUrl":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/a1d757b9ee9618018b5ff8f30aaae88f?_a=AQAEuop","isAccessibleForFree":true,"articleSection":"Maarten Balliauw","inLanguage":"en","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180}},"author":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Maarten Balliauw","logo":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--rOTg3VYO--/f_auto,q_auto/v1791119043/logos/maartenballiauw?_a=BAMAMicg0","url":"https://daily.dev/sources/maartenballiauw"},"commentCount":0,"discussionUrl":"https://daily.dev/posts/windows-azure-traffic-manager-explained-lmirprnvr","interactionStatistic":[{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":0},{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"CommentAction"},"userInteractionCount":0}],"keywords":"cloud,azure,dns","timeRequired":"PT4M"} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https://daily.dev"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Maarten Balliauw","item":"https://daily.dev/sources/maartenballiauw"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"Windows Azure Traffic Manager Explained"}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"FAQPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/windows-azure-traffic-manager-explained-lmirprnvr#faq","mainEntity":[{"@type":"Question","name":"What traffic routing methods does Windows Azure Traffic Manager support?","acceptedAnswer":{"@type":"Answer","text":"Windows Azure Traffic Manager supports three routing profiles: failover, which sends all traffic to one service until it fails and then redirects to a backup; 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