Azure architecture and services Flashcards
Azure Region
A region is a geographical area on the planet that contains at least one, but potentially multiple datacentres that are nearby and networked together with a low-latency network.
Availability Zones
Availability zones are physically separate datacentres within an Azure region. Each availability zone is made up of one or more datacentres equipped with independent power, cooling, and networking.
Region pairs
Most Azure regions are paired with another region within the same geography at least 300 miles away. For example, if a region in a pair was affected by a natural disaster, services would automatically fail over to the other region in its region pair.
Examples of region pairs in Azure
West US paired with East US and South-East Asia paired with East Asia.
Brazil South Region
Brazil South is unique because it’s paired with a region outside of its geography. Brazil South’s secondary region is South Central US. The secondary region of South Central US isn’t Brazil South.
West India Region
West India’s secondary region is South India, South India does not rely on West India. West India’s secondary region is South India, but South India’s secondary region is Central India.
Sovereign Regions
Sovereign regions are instances of Azure that are isolated from the main instance of Azure.
Azure sovereign regions include:
US DoD Central, US Gov Virginia, US Gov, China East, China North, and more
Azure US sovereign regions
These regions are physical and logical network-isolated instances of Azure for U.S. government agencies and partners. These datacentres are operated by screened U.S. personnel and include additional compliance certifications.
Azure China sovereign regions
These regions are available through a unique partnership between Microsoft and 21Vianet, whereby Microsoft doesn’t directly maintain the datacentres.
Azure resources
A resource is the basic building block of Azure. Anything you create, provision, deploy, etc. is a resource. Virtual Machines (VMs), virtual networks, databases, cognitive services, etc.
Resource groups
Resource groups are simply groupings of resources. When you create a resource, you’re required to place it into a resource group.
Can a single resource be in two resource groups?
While a resource group can contain many resources, a single resource can only be in one resource group at a time.
Azure subscriptions
Using Azure requires an Azure subscription. A subscription provides you with authenticated and authorized access to Azure products and services. It also allows you to provision resources.
Billing boundary
This subscription type determines how an Azure account is billed for using Azure. Azure generates separate billing reports and invoices for each subscription so that you can organize and manage costs.
Access control boundary
Azure applies access-management policies at the subscription level, and you can create separate subscriptions to reflect different organizational structures.
Azure management groups
Azure management groups provide a level of scope above subscriptions. You organize subscriptions into containers called management groups and apply governance conditions to the management groups.
How many management groups can be supported in a single directory?
10,000 management groups can be supported in a single directory.
How many levels can a management group tree support?
A management group tree can support up to six levels of depth. This limit doesn’t include the root level or the subscription level.