Understanding platform availability in Azure

It is important to understand that the Azure infrastructure is built and designed to be highly available, but just like in every computer system, there are failures that can happen. Azure offers you a couple of different ways to build resiliency within your infrastructure. Azure is made up of regions and spread across geographies, as shown in Figure 3.1:

Figure 3.1: Azure regions throughout the world

A geography is a designation that ensures that data residency respects geopolitical boundaries and meets any data sovereignty. A geography is typically defined by the borders of a country (typically Microsoft won't add a region without adding two regions in a given country); however, there are a few exceptions, such as Brazil South, which is a single region within a single country.

Also, Azure will always define regional pairs within its infrastructure. This is an important concept in terms of the overall...