F5 NGINX is excited to announce the general availability of our first as-a-Service (aaS) product: F5 NGINXaaS for Azure. We are committed to providing flexible aaS options to fulfill the evolving needs of our customers.
The rapid expansion of aaS offerings parallels the explosive growth in the popularity of cloud computing. The market has quickly warmed to the aaS concept because of some clear advantages compared to hardware and software solutions:
- Faster feature velocity – Enhancements are added on a rolling basis, as opposed to the restrictions of a traditional scheduled cadence of product releases.
- Consistent pricing model – Lower up‑front capital expenses – including infrastructure costs – and more predictable pricing that allows you to address usage needs more flexibly and pay only for what you need.
- Ease of use – Fully managed offerings abstract away complexity, letting organizations focus on business value rather than the effort of standing up the service, and can be accessed by familiar tools including third‑party products like Terraform, SDKs, CLIs, and cloud vendor portals.
What Is NGINXaaS for Azure?
NGINXaaS for Azure is an Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) version of NGINX Plus that enables application developers to deliver consistent, secure, and highly available high‑performance apps in Microsoft Azure. With NGINXaaS for Azure, organizations can now deploy NGINX Plus across environments in the way that best suits their needs, whether that be as an Azure‑native solution, a hybrid approach, or strictly on premises.
We announced the public preview of NGINXaaS for Azure in May 2022. Customers welcomed the power it gave them to extend existing workloads and applications to Azure and the flexibility of consuming NGINX products as a service. During the public preview period, we made many enhancements in response to much‑appreciated customer feedback.
Some of the new capabilities in NGINXaaS for Azure include:
- Content caching to speed delivery to clients while also reducing the workload on servers
- Rate limiting for protection of upstream web and application servers
- Metrics‑based alerts for proactive monitoring
- Assurance that NGINXaaS for Azure deployments are running the most secure, up-to-date, and stable versions of NGINX Plus
- Manual scaling so users can ensure that deployments match the requirements for their service
- Availability in additional Azure regions and zones for improved performance and security of business‑critical workloads
To discover more about NGINXaaS for Azure and its capabilities, please refer to the documentation and watch the livestream (debuts March 14, 2023 at 9:00 AM PST):
Lift and Shift NGINX Plus Configurations to Azure
Lifting and shifting applications to the cloud is a standard part of most cloud adoption journeys, but it’s still complicated and time‑consuming. The most empowering feature of NGINXaaS for Azure is the ease with which you can port existing NGINX Plus configurations to Azure.
Bring-your-own-configuration (BYOC) reduces migration pains across three categories:
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Migrate faster by using existing configurations
Your configurations represent your organization’s tried-and-true solutions to your particular app delivery needs. Being able to port them into Azure and reliably manage them is a significant competitive advantage for your entire business. It brings a level of consistency to seemingly mundane, but immensely critical, functions like traffic management.
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Migrate without impacting team workflows
Migrations are generally disruptive and time‑consuming, but with NGINXaaS for Azure they don’t have to be. Porting your NGINX Plus configurations into NGINXaaS for Azure means you can migrate with minimal distraction and help team members rapidly achieve value from the service. With NGINXaaS for Azure there’s no interruption to the efficiency, performance, and reliability you’ve come to expect from NGINX.
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Reduce time-to-value in Azure and leverage integrations
Once your configurations are ported into Azure, there are further benefits. 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.
For a real‑life example of how a financial services company migrated NGINX Plus configs to Azure using a BYOC model, read Causeway Capital Management to Simplify Deployment and Save Time with F5 NGINXaaS for Azure.
Simplify Hybrid-Cloud App Delivery Tool Stack
In addition to on-premises deployments, most organizations operate in multiple clouds, which commonly come with issues relating to complexity, resilience, and security. One major cause of these issues is tool sprawl: the unnecessary duplication of tools that perform the same functions. Tool sprawl forces teams to maintain different policies for each environment, slows troubleshooting, and limits visibility across the infrastructure. One tool it’s easy to standardize across an entire organization is the load balancer.
NGINXaaS for Azure’s close tie to NGINX Plus is great news for NGINX shops that want consistent app‑delivery tooling across multiple environments.
- For customers wanting to lift and shift NGINX Plus configurations to the Azure cloud, NGINXaaS for Azure is a great choice which can be purchased on the Azure Marketplace and deployed with just a few clicks in the Azure Portal.
- For customers requiring on‑premises deployments or more advanced, customized Azure deployments, NGINX Plus can be purchased on the Azure Marketplace or as a separately purchased product using a bring-your-own-license approach.
Looking Ahead
NGINXaaS for Azure is the result of an F5 and Microsoft co‑development effort – three years in the making – to provide a fully Azure‑native experience of NGINX Plus. In the spirit of the aaS model, this collaboration will continue to deliver exciting new possibilities in the coming months. Stay tuned for the latest news of feature upgrades and increased capabilities that will further help your organization securely address app delivery needs with greater flexibility and resiliency.
Learn more about NGINXaaS for Azure in the product documentation.
Want to give F5 NGINXaaS for Azure a try? Visit the Azure Marketplace or contact us to discuss your use cases.