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Microsoft Azure is a cloud computing service that offers a broad range of services, including those for computing, analytics, storage, and networking. Customers looking to distribute their services and applications across the globe can make use of Azure’s extensive network of regions.
An Azure region is a set of data centers deployed within a latency-defined perimeter and connected through a dedicated regional low-latency network. With more than 60 regions worldwide, Azure provides global scalability and redundancy to its users. Each Azure region is established to enable customers with the flexibility to deploy their applications close to their users or regulatory body’s jurisdiction.
Example: An organization operating in Europe may choose the West Europe region (Netherlands) or North Europe region (Ireland) to deploy their services in order to adhere to data residency and compliance needs.
Each Azure region is paired with another region within the same geography, apart from a few exceptions, creating a regional pair. These pairs are located at least 300 miles apart when possible. Regional pairs are designed to provide redundancy in case of a disaster, offering geographic isolation, power-source independence, and network isolation to support the availability and reliability of applications.
Key advantages of Azure regional pairs include:
Example: The East US region in Virginia is paired with the West US region in California.
Apart from the regular Azure regions, there are also sovereign regions designed specifically for governments and entities that require a unique environment for data protection. Sovereign regions include Azure Government in the United States, Azure China which is operated by 21Vianet, and Azure Germany. Each provides a physically isolated instance of Azure that ensures data residency within that country, compliance with local requirements, and secure connectivity.
Key distinctions of Azure sovereign regions include:
Example: Azure Government provides services to US federal, state, local, and tribal government agencies with requirements for dedicated instances and higher compliance levels.
Azure Region Types | Characteristics | Examples | Compliance | Use Case |
---|---|---|---|---|
Azure Regions | Global scalability, redundancy, and network connectivity | West Europe, North Europe | Standard compliance certifications, eg. ISO, GDPR | General-purpose cloud services, commercial entities |
Azure Regional Pairs | Paired regions within the same geography for disaster recovery | East US with West US | Standard compliance certifications, Regional level adherence (data stays in geography) | Enhanced reliability and automatic disaster recovery for critical applications |
Azure Sovereign Regions | Physically and network isolated regions, high-level data protection | Azure Government, Azure China, Azure Germany | Country-specific compliance certifications, eg. FedRAMP, Germany’s C5 | Government entities and critical operations requiring the highest levels of data isolation and compliance |
Choosing between Azure regions, regional pairs, and sovereign regions will largely depend on the requirements of the business or application in terms of scalability, compliance, latency, and redundancy. Understanding the distinctions between these options enables organizations to make informed decisions about deploying and managing their cloud resources.
Explanation: Azure ensures that each region is paired with another region within the same geography, this is known as regional pairs, which ensures data residency, compliance, and resiliency requirements.
Answer: B
Explanation: Azure regional pairs are designed to provide high availability and redundancy during outages, reducing the likelihood of both regions being impacted at the same time.
Explanation: Azure sovereign regions, such as Azure Germany, Azure China, and the Azure Government, are designed to cater to customers with strict data residency and compliance needs and are usually restricted to those customers.
Answer: A
Explanation: Azure aims to maintain a minimum of 300 miles of separation between datacenters in a regional pair to minimize the likelihood of regional disasters affecting both regions.
Explanation: Sovereign regions are physically and network-isolated from the Azure global network to ensure data residency and compliance with national regulations.
Answer: C
Explanation: While Azure regional pairs provide benefits like data residency control and isolation during updates or outages, enhanced privacy features are not specific to regional pairs and are a part of wider Azure security measures.
Answer: A, B
Explanation: Each Azure region is paired with another within the same geography for redundancy, and regional pairs can be used for data sovereignty. However, data can still be accessed during an outage of one region in the pair, and not every country has an Azure region.
Explanation: Both regions in an Azure regional pair are active, and customers can choose to deploy applications across both regions for high availability.
Answer: B
Explanation: Sovereign regions are often operated by local partners specific to the region to ensure compliance with local regulations and data sovereignty.
Explanation: Azure’s geo-redundant storage (GRS) automatically replicates data to a secondary region (which is the paired region) to provide data redundancy and protection against regional outages.
Answer: C
Explanation: Microsoft will initiate a failover to the secondary region in a regional pair during a widespread outage, although customers can also implement their own failover strategies.
Answer: D
Explanation: Most Azure services support deployment and operation across regional pairs, offering high availability and redundancy for a wide range of applications and services.
An Azure region is a physical location where Azure datacenters are situated.
There are currently over 60 Azure regions around the world.
An availability zone is a physically separate datacenter within the same Azure region that provides redundancy and ensures high availability for critical applications and services.
Regional pairs are geographically separate Azure regions that are close enough to provide low-latency connectivity. They are designed to provide additional redundancy and ensure high availability in the event of a disaster.
There are currently 29 regional pairs in Azure.
A sovereign region is an Azure region that is designed to meet the specific needs of customers who require compliance with specific regulations or data sovereignty requirements.
Azure Government is a sovereign region designed to meet the specific needs of US government customers who require compliance with specific regulations.
Azure China is a sovereign region designed to meet the specific needs of customers in China who require compliance with Chinese regulations.
A virtual machine in Azure is a software emulation of a computer system that can run applications and services.
Azure provides high availability and redundancy for virtual machines through availability sets, which distribute virtual machines across multiple physical hardware nodes within an Azure region.
Azure Load Balancer is a service that can distribute incoming traffic among virtual machines or virtual machine scale sets in an Azure region.
Azure Traffic Manager is a service that can route incoming traffic to the closest available endpoint, whether that endpoint is in the same region or a different region.
Azure Resource Manager is a service that enables you to manage and deploy resources in an Azure subscription.
Azure Backup is a service that provides backup and restore functionality for virtual machines and other Azure resources.
Azure Security Center is a service that provides centralized security management and threat protection for Azure resources.
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