Azure CDN Review
March 19, 2019
Azure CDN Review
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Azure CDN
Azure CDN is Microsoft's cloud content distribution network custom-built for Azure. It shines for its ability to distribute static data easily to thousands -- or millions -- of clients while reducing the load to your origin servers. Azure CDN, like other CDN options, also speeds up client query times, by increasing the likelihood that file requests can be served quickly from a resource already available in the region nearest the request.
- Cost-competitive: Azure CDN is very similar to other options from Amazon and Google, as well as smaller third-parties, and is priced to compete with those other PaaS vendors.
- Like any solid CDN, helps alleviate load at origin nodes for static files.
- A large number of points of presence means that many queries are already available close to end users, reducing the amount of time required to load most files as compared to loading them directly from the origin.
- Unlike Cloudfront, Azure CDN does not yet support WebSockets.
- Limited options for deploying endpoints that support authentication.
- Azure CDN reduced origin instance load by removing the need to constantly serve large numbers of static files, meaning applications can be deployed with smaller/fewer instances.
- Azure CDN reduces apparent load times to customers by serving cached files out of POPs in the local region of those clients, instead of requiring those clients to make multiple, lengthy requests through to the origin servers.
Azure CDN is very similar to other CDN choices -- we generally choose it when the decision to deploy with Microsoft Azure has already been made and the software architecture requires a CDN. Because Azure CDN is very similar to choices from a number of other vendors, we usually choose it when its tie-ins with other Azure services is the key benefit.