Which service should be used to distribute traffic across multiple VMs for performance and redundancy?

Azure Load Balancer is the correct choice because it distributes incoming network traffic across multiple virtual machines (VMs) within the same Azure region. This improves application performance by preventing any single VM from becoming a bottleneck and enhances redundancy by ensuring that if one VM fails, traffic is redirected to healthy ones. Azure Application Gateway is a Layer 7 load balancer with advanced routing and WAF capabilities, but Azure Load Balancer is the fundamental service for distributing traffic across VMs. Azure Front Door is a global, Layer 7 load balancer for web applications, offering CDN capabilities and global routing. Azure VPN Gateway connects on-premises networks to Azure virtual networks or connects multiple Azure virtual networks, not for distributing traffic across VMs.