We already have seen that there are 6 routing methods and any one of them can be associated with Azure Traffic Manager. For more information, see Traffic Manager traffic-routing methods.

Each Azure traffic manager profile is associated with a single routing method. However, sometimes, in real world applications, there might be need of more sophisticated routing methods, meaning let’s say combination of more than one routing methods.

You can nest Traffic Manager profiles to combine the benefits of more than one traffic-routing method.  Nested profiles allow you to override the default Traffic Manager behavior to support larger and more complex application deployments.

In this short post, we can discuss one scenario which would clarify when nested profiles can be used.

Performance and Weighted Combo

Let’s say you have an application deployed in 5 different Azure regions. And you have an Azure traffic manager profile created with “Performance” routing scheme, meaning users will be redirected to the closest best performing Azure region from the location of client.

Now, let’s say in one of the region you want small percentage of traffic to be redirected to the “test” deployment where you want to check response of users to new features. This can be achieved using “Weighted” routing mechanism. But the same traffic manager profile cannot have both “Performance” and “Weighted” mechanisms together.

So in this case, you can create another child profile, with weighted routing mechanism. And this profile will have some weight associated with “actual” deployment and some other percentage for “test” deployment.

Then higher level profile would be performance based, it would redirect to either region specific endpoint or to the child profile using “Performance” routing scheme. If the request goes to child profile, it would decide whether use “actual” or “test” deployment based on weights provided for those endpoints.

I hope you find this information useful. Let me know your thoughts.