Azure Regions. As you can see from the image, at the highest level we have an Azure Geography. Required fields are marked *. An Azure region consists of a set of data centers deployed within a latency-defined perimeter and connected through a dedicated low-latency network. If you're using storage accounts, then geo-redundant storage (GRS) is configured by default when an Azure Storage account is created. Isolation is subject to the constraints within the geography (geography size, power/network infrastructure availability, regulations, etc.). For applications that support multiple active regions, we recommend using both regions in a region pair where possible. Figure 2 below shows a hypothetical application which uses the regional pair for disaster recovery. However, we recommend that you configure business continuity disaster recovery (BCDR) across regional pairs to benefit from isolation and improve availability. So in simple terms, a regional pair consists of two regions within the same geography. So it's worth noting that some regions can have … different operating costs. Azure Paired Regions. While a given Azure service may rely upon a regional pair, you can host your other services in any region that satisfies your business needs. B. Azure Compute (IaaS) – You must provision additional compute resources in advance to ensure resources are available in another region during a disaster. The green numbers highlight the cross-region activities of three Azure services (Azure compute, storage, and database) and how they are configured to replicate across regions. Sequential updates: Planned Azure system updates are rolled out to paired regions sequentially (not at the same time) to minimize downtime, the effect of bugs, and logical failures in the rare event of a bad update. Azure Storage – Geo-Redundant storage (GRS) is configured by default when an Azure Storage account is created. This ensures optimal availability for applications and minimized recovery time in the event of a disaster. This makes them a regional pair (e.g. An Azure region consists of a set of data centers deployed within a latency-defined perimeter and connected through a dedicated low-latency network. This ensures that Azure services within an Azure region offer the best possible performance and security. Azure Resource Manager – Resource Manager inherently provides logical isolation of service management components across regions. An example of paired regions. Azure operates in multiple geographies around the world. However, you can create your own disaster recovery solution by building services in any number of regions and leveraging Azure services to pair them. We are happy to announcement that Azure US Government regions are now listed on Azure Status page. Each Azure Region is paired with another region within the same geography. Azure Data Explorer currently does not support an automatic protection against the outage of an entire Azure … If an application is deployed across regions that are not paired, recovery might be delayed – in the worst case the chosen regions may be the last two to be recovered. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. 1. Business continuity and disaster recovery (BCDR): Azure Paired Regions What are paired regions? Deploy an Azure Stream Analytics job to each region in a paired region. An Azure geography is a defined area of the world that contains at least one Azure Region. Each region comes with a pair within the same geography. No. Azure geographies Overview Products by … When using Azure ExpressRoute to transport production Azure workloads, the recommended configuration uses ExpressRoute circuits in both Azure regions in an Azure region pair using ExpressRoute on-ramps at each region. An example of paired regions. Isolation is subject to the constraints within the geography (geography size, power/network infrastructure availability, regulations, etc.). There is also an Azure geography which defines an area of the world containing at least one Azure region.. And lastly, there are Azure paired regions, or regional … Some Azure services take further advantage of paired regions to ensure business continuity and to protect against data loss. Microsoft Azure Government customers can now visit the page to view the availability status of various services and also get the latest status on any ongoing service interruption incidents. Azure regional pair, paired regions, or region pair, all these terms are used interchangeably and they refer to the same thing, i.e a pair of azure regions. Region recovery order – In the event of a broad outage, recovery of one region is prioritized out of every pair. We will continue to review the additional redundancy features and other core features offered by Microsoft in further blog posts. Your email address will not be published. Azure Regions are paired for addition redundancy to protect from region outages and localized disasters. … East Asia and Southeast Asia, … Platform-provided replication – Some services such as Geo-Redundant Storage provide automatic replication to the paired region. 6. In such cases, recovery and replication must be configured by the customer. Availability Zones are physically separate locations within an Azure Region. Each Azure geography contains one or more regions and meets specific data residency and compliance requirements. Azure SQL Databases – With Azure SQL Standard Geo-Replication, you can configure asynchronous replication of transactions to a paired region. Azure Compute (PaaS) – You must provision additional compute resources in advance to ensure resources are available in another region during a disaster. An Azure geography defines an area of the world containing at least one Azure region. This Azure Region is a concept of Azure Region Pairs. No. Summary: Use Windows PowerShell to get a current list of regions in Azure.. How can I use Windows PowerShell to show me a list of the regions in Microsoft Azure? Each Azure region is paired with another region within the same geography (such as US, Europe, or Asia). If an application is deployed across regions that are not paired, recovery may be delayed – in the worst case the chosen regions may be the last two to be recovered. According to the docs, an Azure region is defined as a set of data centers deployed within a latency-defined perimeter and connected through a dedicated low-latency network.. With 60+ announced regions, more than any other cloud provider, Azure makes it easy to choose the datacenter and regions that are right for you and your customers. Each Azure region is paired with another region within the same geography, together making a regional pair. An Azure region is an area within a geography, containing one or more datacenters. Your email address will not be published. Physical datacenter separation reduces the likelihood of natural disasters, civil unrest, power outages, or physical network outages affecting both regions at once. Azure Resource Manager - Resource Manager inherently provides logical isolation of components across regions. This means logical failures in one region are less likely to impact another. Using Azure DNS and Azure Traffic Manager, customers can design a resilient architecture for their applications that will survive the loss of the primary region. Data residency – A region resides within the same geography as its pair (with the exception of Brazil South) to meet data residency requirements for tax and law enforcement jurisdiction purposes. Products by region For example, you can use Azure services such as AzCopy to schedule data backups to a Storage account in a different region. The green numbers highlight the cross-region activities of three Azure services (Azure compute, storage, and database) and how they're configured to replicate across regions. Azure Paired Regions. … With Azure Regions, you could also take advantage … of a strategy called paired regions, … which are two Azure Regions that are contained … within a specific geographic boundary. Table 1 – Mapping of Azure regional pairs. Azure considers regional pairs when planning updates, maintenance and in the event of outages. Azure serializes platform updates (planned maintenance) across regional pairs, ensuring that only one region in each pair updates at a time. This ensures that Azure services within an Azure region offer the best possible performance and security. This lets you keep your business-critical data and apps nearby on fault-tolerant, high-capacity networking infrastructure. Whenever possible, design your application for maximum resiliency and ease of disaster recovery. Each Azure region is paired with another region within the same geography, and this makes a regional pair except for Brazil South, which is paired with a … Azure Storage - If you're using managed disks, learn about cross-region backups with Azure Backup, and replicating VMs from one region to another with Azure Site Recovery. The exception is Brazil South, which is paired with a region outside its geography. Sequential updates – Planned Azure system updates are rolled out to paired regions sequentially (not at the same time) to minimize downtime, the effect of bugs, and logical failures in the rare event of a bad update. See this criterion as a ‘filter’ to reduce the potential number of Azure Region options and to identify the sub-set of Paired Regions that will be scored. Azure SQL Database – With Azure SQL Database Geo-Replication, you can configure asynchronous replication of transactions to any region in the world; however, we recommend you deploy these resources in a paired region for most disaster recovery scenarios. With premium geo-replication, you can configure replication to any region in the world; however, we recommend you deploy these resources in a paired region for most disaster recovery scenarios. A. This ensures that Azure services within an Azure region offer the best possible performance and security. West Europe with North Europe). An example of paired regions Cross-region activities Benefits of paired regions What are paired regions? Use the Get-AzureLocation cmdlet to output the list to your screen, then you can filter with the DisplayName parameter.This example lists all of the U.S. regions: West India's secondary region is South India, but South India's secondary region is Central India. Each Azure region is paired with another region within the same geography, together making a regional pair. For more information, see Azure Storage Redundancy Options. ADX will make sure that maintenance operations (such as upgrades) are never conducted in parallel to two clusters if they are in Azure paired regions. The exception is Brazil South, which is paired with a region outside its geography. Find more information about Azure's global infrastructure here. Azure provides several storage solutions that take advantage of paired regions to ensure data availability. 2. Figure 2 below shows a hypothetical application that uses the regional pair for disaster recovery. Physical isolation – When possible, Azure prefers at least 300 miles of separation between datacenters in a regional pair, although this isn't practical or possible in all geographies. For more information, see Geo-Replication in Azure SQL Database. A regional pair consists of two regions within the same geography. Typically there are multiple Azure Regions in a Geography (or Geopolitical area) and Regions are paired for redundancy of some low-level Azure services such as Storage Accounts. January 8, 2018 / Vadim Osovitny /. Azure Regions A region is a set of datacenters deployed within a latency-defined perimeter and connected through a dedicated regional low-latency network. What are paired regions? Normally within a Geography you will find two Regions which will be paired to provide customers with high availability options. 3. Geographies allow customers with specific data residency and compliance needs to … Similarly, because Azure controls planned maintenance and recovery prioritization for regional pairs, you can't define your own regional pairs to take advantage of these services. Sequential updates – Planned Azure system updates are rolled out to paired regions sequentially (not at the same time) to minimize downtime, the effect of bugs, and logical failures in the rare event of a bad update. An Azure region consists of a set of data centers deployed within a latency-defined perimeter and connected through a dedicated low-latency network. What are Paired Regions? Azure Site Recovery is a service that provides replication, failover and recovery options. A Location represents the city or area of the Azure Region. Applications that are deployed across paired regions are guaranteed to have one of the regions recovered with priority. South Central US's secondary region is not Brazil South. A Geography, as it relates to Azure, can be used to describe a specific market – typically a country (Australia), though sometimes a geographic region (Asia, Europe). The green numbers highlight the cross-region activities of three Azure services (Azure Compute, Storage, and Database) and how they are configured to replicate across regions. We do have a hypothesis on why Microsoft chose to build out so many regions: Microsoft’s flagship product — Office 365 — is a key use case for Azure data centers. It’s growing!) For moving Azure VMs from Azure Germany to Azure Global there there is planned to write an additional article ; For a general movement of Azure resources (SQL databases, Web Apps and more) a futher post will follow; This article focuses on how to move Azure VMs between Azure global regions using Azure Site Recovery (ASR). Region recovery order – In the event of a broad outage, recovery of one region is prioritized out of every pair. The real reason for having pair regions is that If one of the regions were to experience a disaster or failure, then the services in that region will automatically failover to that regions secondary region in the pair. These Azure Regions are basically geographic groupings of 2, 3, or more data centers. Figure 2 below shows a hypothetical application which uses the regional pair for disaster recovery. Platform-provided replication - Some services such as Geo-Redundant Storage provide automatic replication to the paired region. This means logical failures in one region are less likely to impact another. With GRS, your data is automatically replicated three times within the primary region, and three times in the paired region. Paired Regions are two separate regions in a single Geography , typically the same nation or population centre. Some Azure services rely upon regional pairs, such as Azure's redundant storage. Azure Paired Regions - HA Design. If one of the regions were to experience a disaster or failure, then the services in that region will automatically failover to that regions secondary region in the pair. Geographies define a discrete market, typically containing two or more regions, that preserve data residency and compliance boundaries. This division has several benefits. Using regions that are paired ensures that updates are not applied at the same time among many other benefits that are listed in the above hyperlink. The green numbers highlight the cross-region activities of three Azure services (Azure compute, storage, and database) and how they are configured to replicate across regions. For a region to qualify for analysis, the primary and paired region should both be ‘SAP-Capable’ (i.e have Mv1 and Mv2 Series Virtual Machines available). For more information, see Azure resiliency technical guidance. 8. … For example, Azure Geo-redundant Storage (GRS) replicates data to a secondary region automatically, ensuring that data is durable even in the event that the primary region isn't recoverable. This approach allows for the replication of resources, such as VM storage, across a geography that should reduce the likelihood of natural disasters, civil unrest, power outages, or physical network outages affecting both regions at once. Azure functions in different geographies throughout the globe. Customers can leverage Azure services to architect a resilient service without relying on Azure's regional pairs. 4. Note that not all Azure services automatically replicate data, nor do all Azure services automatically fall-back from a failed region to its pair. Figure 2 – Hypothetical Azure regional pair. An Azure GRS storage solution may pair data in Canada Central with a peer in Canada East while using Compute resources located in East US. While building their banking solution, EINSTEIN BANK used AZURE PAIRED-REGIONS. C. Monitor jobs in both regions for failure. 9. West India is paired in one direction only. Physical datacenter separation reduces the likelihood of natural disasters, civil unrest, power outages, or physical network outages affecting both regions at once. Azure paired regions is not a product itself but more of an architectural recommendation when planning to host your highly available app in Azure. Selecting the nearest Azure regions can keep the latency down when communicating across the internet. Brazil South is unique because it is paired with a region outside of its geography. In general, An Azure Region Pair is a relationship between 2 Azure Regions within the same geographic region for disaster recovery purposes. Deploy an Azure Stream Analytics job to two separate regions that are not in a pair. Applications that are deployed across paired regions are guaranteed to have one of the regions recovered with priority. 7. All Azure resources are created in an Azure region and subscription. What are Azure paired regions. These services don't allow you to create new regional pairings. If an outage affects multiple regions, at least one region in each pair will be prioritized for recovery. Regions have been the standard way Microsoft makes Azure available somewhere in the world. With the power of Azure, you can benefit from paired regions. With GRS, your data is automatically replicated three times within the primary region, and three times in the paired region. Applications that are deployed across paired regions are guaranteed to have one of the regions recovered with priority. Data residency – A region resides within the same geography as its pair (with the exception of Brazil South) in order to meet data residency requirements for tax and law enforcement jurisdiction purposes. An Azure Region Pair is a relationship between 2 Azure Regions within the same geographic region for disaster recovery purposes. What is Azure Region Pairs? No. With this service you can replicate an Azure VM and even on-premises VMs and physical servers to a different region (from a primary location to a secondary location). (At least at the time of writing this article; Microsoft keeps investing and building new regions. In this article, measurements are discussed for Azure storage, SQL, Cosmos DB … Although the production ready tiers of PaaS services and paired regions already solve a lot, a customer still needs to take measurements to plan for disaster. What is an Azure region? Regional outage - HowTo. Physical isolation – When possible, Azure prefers at least 300 miles of separation between datacenters in a regional pair, although this isn’t practical or possible in all geographies. The image below illustrates a hypothetical application that uses the regional pair for disaster recovery. The unique benefits of deploying across paired regions are highlighted by the orange numbers. Figure 2 – Hypothetical Azure regional pair. Brazil South's secondary region is South Central US. 5. An Azure geography is a discrete market typically containing two or more regions that preserve data residency and compliance boundaries.