Azure Geographies

This is Part 3 of Azure tutorial. In our previous article we discussed Azure Datacenters. In this article we will discuss Azure Geographies.

Azure Geographies

An Azure geography is an area of the world that contains at least one Azure region. For example, India is a geography. Similarly United States and United Kingdom are geographies. 

As of this writing, the following are the Azure geographies available. Azure is growing at a very rapid pace, so by the time you watch this course there might be a lot more geographies available. 

1. India
2. United States
3. United Kingdom
4. Canada
5. Africa
6. Australia
7. Europe
8. Asia Pacific
9. Azure Government
10. Austria
11. Brazil
12. China
13. France
14. Germany
15. Greece
16. Israel
17. Italy
18. Japan
19. Korea
20. Mexico
21. New Zealand
22. Norway
23. Poland
24. Qatar
25. Spain
26. Switzerland
27. Taiwan
28. United Arab Emirates

Most geographies correspond to countries like India, United States, United Kindgom, Canada etc. Some geographies like Africa, Australia and Europe correspond to continents. Some geographies like Asia Pacific for example correspond to a specific region. 

Azure Government

We also have a geography called Azure Government. This geography is only available to the United States federal, state, local, and tribal governments and their partners. It's not available for general public use. Azure Government offers the broadest level of certifications, so even the most critical government compliance requirements are met. This geography is specifically for US government use, so all of it's operations are controlled by screened and cleared US citizens.

Why are Azure Geographies important

Well, regulated data like financial, health care or credit data may not be allowed to leave the country. Legally your organisation is required to store such data in the same country where the operations are being carried out. So, if you select a geography like India for example, Azure ensures your data is not stored outside of India. Similarly if you select United States, the data stays inside the states. You have complete control on which geographies you want your data and applications to be deployed. You can be assured, Microsoft will not store customer data outside the geography you specify, except for certain non-regional services.

You can find all the available Azure geographies on the following web page

In simple terms, an Azure geography is an area of the world that contains one or more Azure regions. Azure region is a very important concept because every time you create an azure resource like a virtual machine for example, you need to specify the region where you want the resource, in this case, the virtual machine to be created. An azure region may also be paired-up with another azure region and there are several benefits of this paring. An azure region may also have availability zones.