Application Gatway v2 brings several welcome additions to the service since it’s initial v1 release. For those who have spent time configuring an Application Gateway, you’ll be glad to hear that udpate/modification times have been drastically reduced. Better performance and the addition of functionality are some of the other main reasons to use v2 over v1. The entire list can be found here.

Recently, I had to secure an Application Service with an Application Gateway v2 on the WAF (web application firewall) tier. This is something I have done several times with v1 without any significant issue. In this instance the Application Service runs on a custom domain as does the Application Gateway. Requirements were to run SSL end to end and have WAF run in prevention mode.

If you’ve ever done this before, you know there are some basics to be completed within your Application Service. For this post and my requirement, they were map a custom domain, runs HTTPS only and prep rules to allow connections only from your Application Gateway. How to do all of that can be found at the following links:

• Custom Domain
• SSL Binding
• Restrict IPs

Once your Application Service is ready to go, you move on to configuring your Application Gateway. This is a relatively simple process and can even be completed within the Portal. There is a published guide here. However, once it was configured, I noticed that certain redirect functionality aspects of the application were returning the default host name of the Application Service. This can also happen if you use Azure AD authentication. With WAF in prevention mode, this returns a 403 as a default rule picks up the change in address.

The reason for this is how both Application Gateway and Application Service handle their host headers. To fix this issue, there are two changes you can make, one of which that is only possible on Application Gateway v2.

The v2 only fix is to rewrite the location in the host header using rewrite rules. Rewrite rules are new functionality only included in v2. A guide on what you need to do exactly is here. Make sure the text is exactly as in the guide or it will not work.

The second option, and the one that is more common is to change how your Custom Probe and HTTP settings are configured. The reason for this is that the default guide does not take into account the use of a custom domain on your Application Service. For both settings, modify and remove the ” PickHostNameFromBackendAddress” setting. Now, the Application Gateway will forward the same hostname and redirection will happen on the same too. Full guide here.

As always, if there are any questions on the above, get in touch!