Microsoft Azure Application Gateway Reviews

Our client is using three to four applications. One use case is with the integration layer, which has the website running on the web app. It interacts with different applications and with their on-premise SAP solution as well. This app service works as an integration layer between the SAP solution and other different applications. The solution also has its patient application running, which is the patient appointment system, since our client is a healthcare organization. That separate application also runs on App Service and is deployed on Application Gateway.

I find its Application Gateway's WAF module valuable because it helps prevent layer 7 attacks.

Application Gateway’s limitation is that the private and the public endpoint cannot use the same port. But I believe they are working on it.

Another shortcoming is that the maximum permissive size for the request body size is two MB, and it needs to be increased up to five MB or more. Some other third-party solutions or even AWS provides better request body size in this regard.

I would like to see some more features in WAF with the next release to make it more competitive with leading web solution providers. When we compare the WAF with other solutions like F5’s WAF, Application Gateway’s WAF has fewer features.

I rate the solution's stability a seven out of ten. It took us four or five months to optimize the solution.

I rate Application Gateway's scalability a ten out of ten because it is very good. It has an autoscale feature. The solution is being used on close to 200 endpoints. My client is a medium-sized healthcare business.

Sometimes customer support puts issues in loops, where they take us through L1 and L2, and it takes some time to get to the right person who can address the issue.

Neutral

I rate the initial setup an eight-point-five out of ten because it is easy. Deploying the solution takes a day or so, but all the configurations, working with the application team, and optimizations take time. Usually, it takes three to four days.

While deploying the solution, we gathered application data first, such as the URLs which we needed to run the app services, health probe ports, the certificates from the customer, and any custom flash rules which may need to be created. We gathered all the information from the customer and the customer's development teams.

I rate the pricing seven out of ten because some third-party solutions are even costlier than this. The product's price is good considering the set of features it provides. There is no cost in licensing, but they charge us based on the size of the application gateway, the data being transferred, and the gateway's scalability.

The solution's app service and application gateway took us eight months to implement. It's a huge infrastructure.

If you are considering using Application Gateway, you have to understand the application flow thoroughly. If it will be an integration layer where you might face a lot of issues, counseling with the developers and the customer's teams is very important. The solution requires optimization from the WAF perspective as well as timeouts and other settings. It may take some time to stabilize. The product is stable, but I rate it a seven out of ten based on the features I've seen in competitors, like third-party dedicated WAF solutions, which provide a lot more flexibility and features to their customers. However, they are more costly. And when you have to design scalable solutions, they cost a lot more.