Core Architectural Components

Question 1

Region

Answer 1

A geographical area that contains at least one, but potentially multiple, datacenters that are nearby and networked together with a low-latency network.

Question 2

Availability Zone

Answer 2

• Physically separate datacenters within an Azure region.
• Each AZ is made up of one or more datacenters
• If one AZ goes down, the other continues working
• Are connected through high-speed, private fiber-optic networks
• Customers can use AZs to run mission-critical applications and build high-availability into application architecture by co-locating compute, storage, networking and data resources in an AZ and replicating to other AZs

Question 3

Region Pairs

Answer 3

Most Azure regions are paired with another region within the same geography at least 300 miles away. This allows for the replication of resources across a geography that helps reduce the likelihood of interruptions because of natural disasters, civil unrest, power outages, network outages that affect an entire region.

Question 4

Sovereign regions

Answer 4

• Regions that are instances of Azure but are isolated from the main Azure instance, for compliance or legal purposes (e.g. 3 US Gov regions, certain China regions)

Question 5

Resources and Resource Groups

Answer 5

• Resources: anything that is created, provisioned and/or deployed (e.g. VMs, virtual networks, databases etc)
• Resource Groups: groupings of resources. A resource is required to be part of a group when created, and can only be part of one group. Applying an action (e.g. granting access) to a resource group applies it to all resources in the group. Also convenient for provisioning or deprovisioning several resources at once.

Question 6

Subscriptions

Answer 6

• Provides the customer with authenticated and authorised access to Azure products and services
• Links to an Azure Account, minimum one per account
• Best used for Billing Boundary: separate billing models; and Access Control Boundary: access-management policies at the subscription level provides the ability to separate different organisation structures (or environments)

Question 7

Management Groups

Answer 7

Resources are gathered into resource groups, resource groups are gathered into subscriptions. Management groups are a level above subscriptions and allow customers to efficiently manage access, policies, and compliance across all subscriptions.