Question
In Azure terms, does one Availability Zone refer to one physical DataCenter?
Answer
Availability Zone 1 can refer to a single datacenter or multiple datacenters, and may also refer to different datacenters in the same region depending on the subscription.
For example:
Region1 has 6 datacenters, we’ll call them DC1, DC2…. DC6.
John has an Azure subscription.
Dave also has an Azure subscription.
For John, the AZs are configured like this:
- AZ1 = DC1 and DC2
- AZ2 = DC3 and DC4.
- AZ3 = DC5 and DC6.
For Dave when configuring resources in the same region as John, the AZs are configured like this.
- AZ1 = DC3 and DC4.
- AZ2 = DC5 and DC6.
- AZ3 = DC1 and DC2.
The purpose of this is to distribute the workload between the datacenters.
It is important to note that Availability Zones and Physical Data Centers are not interchangeable, as an Availability Zone can consist of multiple Physical Data Centers. An Availability Zone is composed of one or more Data Centers, each of which is equipped with independent power, cooling and networking infrastructure.