Azure Datacenters
Slide deck explaining Azure datacenters, the difference between datacenters and regions, availability zones, facility design, and how to make deployment location decisions.
Azure Datacenters
Introduction to Azure Datacenters, covering physical facilities and location concepts in Azure.
Azure Datacenters
Introduction to Azure Datacenters, covering physical facilities and location concepts in Azure.
Building vs location in Azure
You choose a region; Azure manages the physical building placement. Datacenter equals physical facility (building). Region equals geographic area you choose. Availability zones equal separate locations inside a region. Most deployments start with choosing a region.
Azure datacenter = physical facility
A datacenter is the building where cloud hardware runs. Servers, storage, and networking equipment. Facility infrastructure: power and cooling. Physical access controls. Provider-operated facility processes.
No datacenter selection menu
Azure abstracts individual buildings; you choose higher-level location units. Datacenters are not customer-selectable targets. Azure groups datacenters into regions. Placement is managed by Azure within the region. You focus on region plus service configuration.
Azure region = geographic area
A region contains one or more nearby datacenters connected by low-latency networking. Region equals geographic area you choose. Contains one or more datacenters. Datacenters are nearby plus network-connected. Region choice is the main 'where to deploy' decision.
Datacenter vs region (quick test)
Building equals datacenter; geographic area equals region. Datacenter: building plus hardware plus facility systems. Region: geographic area containing datacenters. Example region: 'West Europe'. Region does not equal single datacenter.
You deploy to a region
In most cases, you choose a region; Azure manages building placement. Typical selection: region, not a building. Azure handles placement inside the region. You choose region based on needs (latency/data/services). Reliability comes from design plus configuration.
Availability zones (inside a region)
Zones are physically separate datacenters within the same region. Availability zones equal separate locations within a region. Physically separate datacenters. Independent power, cooling, and networking. Helps limit blast radius of a location failure.
Resilience inside one region
Use availability zones to reduce dependence on a single location. Single location can be a failure boundary. If available: spread across availability zones. Zone failure does not equal total outage (if designed correctly). Region choice alone doesn't ensure zone distribution.
Facility design supports reliability + security
Datacenters use redundancy and physical controls managed by the provider. Redundancy reduces single points of failure. Multiple layers of power and networking (conceptually). Physical access controls protect hardware. Provider runs facility security processes.
Zones vary by region
Availability zone support is region-specific—verify before you design around it. Not every region supports availability zones. Support varies by region. Check zone availability for your chosen region. Design resilience based on what's actually supported.
Don't memorize counts—verify
Datacenter and region counts change; use official maps and lists. Azure footprint is global and changes over time. Use official sources to verify locations. Region count does not equal datacenter count. A region can contain multiple datacenters.
Recap
Datacenter, region, and availability zones each answer a different 'where' question. Datacenter: physical facility. Region: geographic area containing datacenters. Availability zones: separate datacenters within a region.