We are having difficulties choosing a load balancing solution (Load Balancer, Application Gateway, Traffic Manager, Front Door) for IIS websites on Azure VMs. The simple use case when there are 2 identical sites is covered well – just use Azure Load Balancer or Application Gateway. However, in cases when we would like to update websites and test those updates, we encounter limitation of load balancing solutions.
For example, if we would like to update IIS websites on VM1 and test those updates, the strategy would be:
- Point a load balancer to VM2.
- Update IIS website on VM1
- Test the changes
- If all tests are passed then point the load balancer to VM1 only, while we update VM2.
- Point the load balancer to both VMs
We would like to know what is the best solution for directing traffic to only one VM. So far, we only see one option – removing a VM from backend address pool then returning it back and repeating the process for other VMs. Surely, there must be a better way to direct 100% of traffic to only one (or to specific VMs), right?
