How to Improve Your Website Performance on Microsoft Azure
The performance of your website directly relates to how your visitors interact with your site. This means that having a fast and responsive website has the potential to increase engagement, improve conversion rates, and even enhance your ranking on search engines. Luckily, Microsoft Azure has a variety of tools and services available to optimize the performance of your website. In this article, we aim to help you realize practical improvements concerning the speed, reliability, and overall performance of your website on Azure.
A CDN (Content Delivery Network) is a network of servers that provides web and other services has content is delivered to users based on their geographical location. The functionality of Azure CDN allows content delivery from the closest location which drastically ensures website performance optimization within increased regional user traffic. CDN caches static components of the site such as images, JavaScript, and CSS files at edge locations across the globe, which mitigates the issues with latency encountered by so many users regardless of their geographical location.
How to implement Azure CDN:
Step 1: In the azure portal, create a CDN profile and endpoint.
Step 2: Configure your CDN to cache your static assets including styles, scripts, and images.
Step 3: Update your website to use the CDN URLs for static content.
With Azure CDN, content can be delivered in a much shorter time frame, thus allowing users to access the website faster, which improves user experience.
2. Use Auto-Scaling for Improved Performance of Azure Web Apps
Auto-scaling is a standard Azure feature which reallocates system resources based on traffic demand. If a given website receives sudden traffic spikes, Azure can automatically add additional server instances through auto-scaling to accommodate the increased load.
Advantages of auto-scaling:
User Experience: During periods of high traffic, users will be able to use the website without any interruptions.
Cost Efficient: Savings can be made on operational costs as resources will only be paid for when in use.
Steps to set up Auto-scaling:
1. Open your Azure Web App from the portal.
2. Set the scaling rules that you want to traffic your website with under ‘Scaling’.
Your website is guaranteed uninterrupted performance for all users regardless of traffic due to the auto-scaling feature.
3. Take Advantage of Azure’s Load Balancer
Azure Load Balancer manages the incoming network traffic to multiple servers. This assures that no server goes past its optimal limit. This provides better performance, and higher availability. The way it works is it solves the user requests from the healthiest instance of your website, which keeps the server active and averts bottlenecks from forming.
Guidelines for utilizing Azure Load Balancer:
Configure backend pools and create a load balancer in the Azure portal.
Add your Azure Web Apps to the load balancer’s backend pool.
Define rules for load balancing and direct traffic accordingly.
The use of Azure Load Balancer improves the performance of websites, especially for those with high availability and traffic requirements.
4. Enable HTTP/2 for Faster Data Transfer
Hypertext Transfer Protocol version 2 (HTTP/2) is the second major version of the HTTP network protocol used by the World Wide Web. It improves on HTTP/1.1 performance by bringing down latency, enabling multiplexing, and implementing header compression. Enabling HTTP/2 on your Azure website can significantly improve page load times.
Steps on how to enable HTTP/2 on Azure:
Go to your Azure Web App.
Turn on HTTP/2 under the “TLS/SSL settings” tab.
Overall performance improves drastically, and transfer rates become faster due to reduced overhead multi-connection data transfer.
5. Enhanced Performance of Azure SQL database by Optimizing a Database
Website speed is one of the things affected by having a sluggish database. Azure SQL Database offers features that automate the database optimization process. These encompass automated tuning, indexing, and gaining insight into the queries run in the database.
Performance optimization best practices:
Indexing: Properly index your database tables. With indexing, SQL queries can be executed in a shorter duration.
Optimized Query Analysis: Queries should be periodically analyzed and optimized to ensure efficiency.
In-Memory OLTP: Activate in-memory OLTP (online transaction processing) for Azure SQL Database to enhance the performance of hot transaction applications.
In as much as there are shortcomings to using Azure SQL databases, optimizing performance features can minimize the response time from the database, improving the speed of your website.</br>
6. Decrease Latency through Caching
NPCaching proves to be one of the best if not the best ways to maximize the performance of a website. Azure implements different caching solutions which include Azure Cache for Redis which keeps data in memory for fast access. Caching both static and dynamic content reduces the time required to access database contents, thus resulting in great reduction of loading time.
How to set up caching using Azure Cache for Redis:
Log into the Azure portal and create a new instance of Azure Cache Azure Cache for Redis.
Add Redis to your website application so that it can retrieve cached data.
Employ Redis to cache prominent user data and even pages that are frequently visited alongside active sessions.
This improves the web efficacy while also balancing the weight on servers and databases.
7. Media Files and Images Optimization
Media files alongside images that are large could increase the loading time of the website, particularly for targeted users with slower internet connections. Because of this, optimizing images becomes greatly important. Media file optimization tools are available at your fingertips with Azure.
Tips to optimize your file images:
Use the choice of blob storage: This helps to reduce the usage of the web server since it can store large image files.
Image Decrease: Increased and automated images can be done with the aid of Azure image Resizing API or other third-party services.
This can increase the web performance speed by lowering the image’s size whilst not lowering the quality.
8. Azure Application Insights for Performance Tracking.
Insights for applications and monitoring is done easily with Azure application where bulk of tracing is done. The application’s effectiveness is monitored in real time, for example, how responsive the application is, and how fast it loads pages, processes server side issues, and how the user engages with the application.
Steps to integrate application insights:
Log into your Azure portal to set up application insights. After set up, embed your site via the SDK.
Analyze the gathered information to find performance impediments and improve your website as necessary.
Application Insights allows for continuous improvement of your website based on real-time data analysis.
9. Employ an Azure Traffic Manager for World Wide Distribution
An Azure Traffic Manager allows for users traffic to be split over multiple locations which ensures they are served by the data center closer to them. This helps reduce the response time, and maximize the performance of the website for international users.
How to configure the Azure Traffic Manager:
Log in to the Azure portal and create a Traffic Manager profile.
From different regions, add your web app instances.
Set the routing rules ( for example performance-based or geo-based).
By utilizing resources closer to the user, you can reduce the time to render a page as well as enhance performance for international users.
Final Remarks
Microsoft Azure allows for optimizing your website performance and provides the tools required for a fast and responsive user experience. Utilizing powerful Azure tools such as CDN, auto-scaling, load balancing, cache, and database optimization will ensure the best performance at all times.
For expert help with hosting and optimizing your Azure-based website, reach out to Tezhost. Tezhost specializes in custom-tailored hosting services that guarantee smooth operational flow for your website on Azure. Contact Tezhosttoday and receive assistance with optimizing your website’s performance on Microsoft Azure effortlessly!
By: usman sadiq 
By TezHost Editorial 
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