Azure Global Infrastructure

Regions

Azure regions are physical locations around the world where Microsoft Azure data centers are located. These regions allow customers to deploy and run their applications and services close to their target audience for improved performance and compliance.

Geographies

Azure geographies are areas of the world containing multiple Azure regions that are close to each other, providing data residency and data sovereignty options. They are designed to offer high availability and disaster recovery options.

Availability Zones

Azure Availability Zones are unique physical locations within an Azure region. These zones are designed to protect applications and data from data center failures by providing redundant power, cooling, and networking. They are isolated from one another to ensure fault tolerance.

Zonal Services

Zonal services in Azure are those that can be deployed to specific Availability Zones, providing high availability and fault tolerance. Examples include virtual machines and managed disks.

Zone-Redundant Services

Zone-redundant services in Azure automatically replicate data and services across multiple Availability Zones, ensuring high availability. Azure SQL Database and Azure Blob Storage are examples of services that support zone redundancy.

Regions that support Availability Zones

Not all Azure regions support Availability Zones. You can check which regions support them by referring to the Azure documentation or by using the Azure CLI.

Services that support Availability Zones

Many Azure services support Availability Zones, such as Virtual Machines, SQL databases, and Load Balancers. You can find a complete list of these services in the Azure documentation or by using the Azure CLI to explore available options for your specific region and subscription.