AZ-305 Design infrastructure solutions Practice Question
You need to design a network topology for a global e-commerce platform on Azure. The solution must provide low-latency access to static content and protect the backend APIs from DDoS attacks. The backend APIs are deployed in multiple regions behind an internal load balancer. Which services should you use?
⚠ Common exam trap
Test-takers frequently confuse Azure Application Gateway (regional, Layer 7) with Azure Front Door (global, anycast), and overlook that only Front Door provides global low-latency access and edge DDoS protection for multi-region deployments.
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
Azure Front Door with WAF and Azure API Management.
Azure Front Door with WAF provides global load balancing and low-latency access to static content via its anycast-based routing, while the integrated Web Application Firewall (WAF) protects backend APIs from DDoS and application-layer attacks. Azure API Management secures and manages the backend APIs, offering policies for throttling, authentication, and transformation. This combination meets the requirements for global low-latency content delivery and DDoS protection for multi-region backend APIs.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Azure Traffic Manager and Azure Firewall.
Why it's wrong here
Azure Traffic Manager is a DNS-based global load balancer that routes clients to endpoints at DNS resolution time, but it does not inspect HTTP requests and has no Web Application Firewall (WAF) capability to block SQL injection or cross-site scripting. Azure Firewall is a stateful network firewall focused on L3/L4 filtering and FQDN-based network rules, not an API gateway—it cannot validate subscription keys, enforce API quotas, transform requests, or publish developer documentation. The pair therefore provides neither global WAF nor API management, both of which are essential for exposing e-commerce APIs safely.
- ✗
Azure Content Delivery Network (CDN) and Azure Load Balancer.
Why it's wrong here
Azure Content Delivery Network (CDN) is designed to accelerate static content delivery by caching assets at edge locations; dynamic API traffic bypasses the cache and receives no request-level security or API control. Azure Load Balancer is a regional Layer 4 load balancer that forwards packets to backend pools without inspecting HTTP payloads, so it cannot terminate TLS for API inspection, filter malicious application-layer traffic, or enforce API-management policies. This combination lacks a Web Application Firewall and any API gateway function, and it does not provide a global HTTP routing layer capable of intelligent failover for API traffic across regions.
- ✗
Azure Application Gateway with WAF and Azure API Management.
Why it's wrong here
Azure Application Gateway with WAF delivers robust regional Layer 7 protections and HTTP(S) routing, but it is deployed and operates within a single region only, so it cannot provide global load balancing or cross-region failover for a worldwide e-commerce API. Pairing it with Azure API Management gives you a strong API facade, but the WAF and gateway ingress remain pinned to one Azure region, leaving all other regions without the same traffic engineering and edge security. A multi-region global solution requires Azure Front Door or Traffic Manager plus WAF at the edge, which makes this option incomplete for global scale.
- ✓
Azure Front Door with WAF and Azure API Management.
Why this is correct
Azure Front Door with WAF provides a single global entry point via anycast and split TCP, performing Layer 7 routing, SSL termination, path-based matching, and edge WAF policies that can inspect every request before it reaches the API origin. Azure API Management then acts as the API gateway, publishing APIs, applying subscription keys, validating JWT/OAuth tokens, rate-limiting and quotaing consumers, and enabling versioning/transformation policies. Together they satisfy the e-commerce platform's need for global availability, DDoS and WAF protection, and secure API control, while keeping backend origins scalable and stable.
Go deeper
Related to this question
Learn chapter
Designing Azure Network Solutions
Key term
Application Gateway Design
Application Gateway Design is the process of planning and configuring a layer 7 load balancer in Azure that routes web traffic based on URL paths, hostnames, or other HTTP rules for secure, scalable, and high-performance application delivery.
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JA
Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This AZ-305 practice question is part of Courseiva's free Microsoft certification practice question bank. Courseiva provides original exam-style practice questions with explanations, topic-based practice, mock exams, readiness tracking, and study analytics to help learners prepare for the AZ-305 exam.