What primary function does the Azure Load Balancer serve?

The Azure Load Balancer primarily serves the function of routing traffic between users and applications. It operates at the transport layer (Layer 4) of the OSI model and is designed to distribute incoming network traffic across multiple backend servers. This load balancing helps ensure reliability and availability by preventing any single server from becoming overwhelmed with too much traffic. By effectively directing user requests to the appropriate resources, the Azure Load Balancer enhances application performance and maintains consistent response times for users.

The other choices do not align with the primary purpose of the Azure Load Balancer. While it may indirectly help with performance monitoring by allowing a balanced load, monitoring network performance is not its main function. Providing firewall capabilities and supporting data processing tasks are also not direct roles of the Load Balancer, as these functionalities are generally managed by other Azure services.