Introducing F5 NGINXaaS for Azure – Load Balancing Available Natively as a SaaS Offering on Microsoft Azure

High-performing cloud and development teams working in Microsoft Azure have come to appreciate the benefits of putting F5 NGINX Plus to work in their cloud environment. But high performance isn’t a destination – it’s an ongoing journey. Cloud architects and DevOps teams have asked us to take the powerful combination of NGINX Plus and Azure even further. At the top of their wish lists, customers have asked for a native Azure software as a service (SaaS) experience with NGINX products and the flexibility of Bring Your Own Configuration (BYOC) on Azure.

Microsoft and F5 NGINX have listened and taken those wishes to heart, joining forces for the past two years to collaborate on fulfilling them. Today, we are excited to announce that NGINX Plus is now native to Azure – introducing F5 NGINXaaS for Azure!

Why NGINX and Microsoft Azure Make Sense

Adding NGINX to your cloud development efforts helps speed both cloud adoption and deployment of modern apps because it’s easy to extend workloads and applications to Azure. NGINXaaS for Azure reduces the learning curve and enables you to achieve consistency in performance and security because the same, trusted load‑balancing solution is used across your entire estate of applications, both on premises and in the cloud. With NGINXaaS for Azure, you can leverage enhanced traffic management features and achieve significantly better visibility into modern apps and their performance.

NGINXaaS for Azure brings you a myriad of benefits – let’s take a look.

Reduced Complexity

First and foremost, NGINX Plus is no longer an “external” solution. NGINXaaS for Azure unleashes the power of NGINX Plus entirely within your Azure environment, reducing the overall complexity of your stack.

Integration Is a Breeze – You Won’t Miss a Beat

Deploying NGINXaaS for Azure is incredibly straightforward. With just three clicks, you can add NGINX Plus to the Azure environment, and begin to seamlessly leverage useful features such as advanced traffic management services and advanced visibility through monitoring. NGINX Plus deployments in Azure are simplified with fewer moving parts.

Lift and Shift Your Configurations to the Cloud

With NGINXaaS for Azure, it’s easier than ever to port your custom NGINX Plus configurations directly into Azure and make your system uniquely your own. Your development teams spend considerable resources to produce solutions that are specific to your business needs. Now, you can more easily lift and shift your modern apps to the cloud without interrupting the efficiency, performance, and reliability you’ve come to expect from NGINX, and without impacting team workflows. Such ease of transfer makes the dream of BYOC a reality.

Advanced Traffic Management Capabilities

With the advanced traffic management capabilities of NGINXaaS for Azure, you can better leverage the inherent advantages of cloud‑native technologies, including:

• Securing your apps by authenticating and authorizing users and client applications with JSON Web Tokens (JWTs)

• Ensuring reliability by intelligently routing requests only to services that are operational, as determined by active health checks

Leverage Azure Features for Increased Efficiency and Convenience

With NGINXaaS for Azure, you can take advantage of Azure features that make managing NGINX Plus more convenient and efficient:

• Native GitHub CI/CD workflows for creating and updating NGINX Plus configuration files make deployment fast and convenient. You can also leverage Microsoft’s integrations with GitHub to manage Azure credentials and secrets.

• Azure Monitor provides single‑pane visualization of key metrics across all of your NGINX Plus deployments. A comprehensive list of available, ready-to-use metrics makes it easy to customize monitoring.

  

• Azure Key Vault safeguards your keys and secrets, simplifying and automating the tasks associated with tracking SSL and TLS certificates and increasing your control of security across your entire NGINX Plus estate.

Convenient Billing and Huge Cost Savings

Billing for NGINXaaS for Azure is convenient and smooth. Even better, your purchase of NGINXaaS for Azure in the Azure Marketplace counts fully towards buying down your Microsoft Azure Consumption Commitment (MACC). This helps you fulfill existing consumption agreements and further your initiatives toward continuity across your business units. NGINXaaS for Azure further lowers the cost of running NGINX Plus because infrastructure charges are aligned with actual usage.

A Native Azure SaaS Experience of NGINX Technologies

Perhaps the most exciting result of the marriage between Azure and NGINX is the new customer experience of a native Azure SaaS. NGINXaaS for Azure gives you more power, reduces the complexity of your system, and makes your apps more secure. Developers will appreciate the consistency and customers will recognize the improvement in the overall journey and experience.

Conclusion

If modern apps are at the center of your business strategy, and you’re leveraging the cloud to contain costs and more quickly achieve your digital transformation goals, NGINXaaS for Azure is a simple and cost‑efficient way to turbocharge your efforts and deliver supreme value to your customers. You also gain competitive advantage by ideally positioning your organization for the growth and expansion your continuing success requires. NGINXaaS for Azure is the winning move for today and tomorrow!

Want to give NGINXaaS for Azure a try? Visit the F5 NGINXaaS For Azure public preview page on the Azure Marketplace or contact us to discuss your use cases.