A software-as-a-service (SaaS) provider is deploying a multi-tenant application to the East US region. To protect their database against a localized fire or power failure in a single datacenter building, they plan to distribute database replicas across multiple Availability Zones. During a team review, a junior developer asks how these zones are isolated and if they can use them to protect against a large-scale natural disaster affecting the entire East US region. Which statement correctly describes the architectural properties of Availability Zones to address the developer's query?
- AAvailability Zones span across multiple separate geographical regions within a geography, allowing a single zone to survive a complete regional outage.
- Availability Zones are unique physical locations with independent power, cooling, and networking within a single region, meaning region-wide disasters must be mitigated using a separate region or region pair.Answer
- CAvailability Zones provide disaster recovery by automatically replicating data across a minimum distance of 300 miles, whereas regions provide high availability within a single datacenter building.
- DAvailability Zones inherit their physical boundaries and location from the resource group in which they are created, restricting resources to the resource group's region.
Answer
Availability Zones are unique physical locations with independent power, cooling, and networking within a single region, meaning region-wide disasters must be mitigated using a separate region or region pair.
The correct option correctly states that Availability Zones are physically isolated datacenters within a single Azure region, featuring independent utility infrastructure. It also accurately highlights that since they reside within the same region, they cannot protect against regional disasters, which instead require cross-region replication or region pairs.
Step-by-Step Solution
Key Concept
Azure Regions, Availability Zones, and Region Pairs