Azure as a global cloud platform provides multiple regions to deploy resources to. One region consists of at least one highly available data center or data center complex. At the time of writing, 54 regions are distributed all over the world and include community clouds, so-called sovereign regions.
Microsoft also divides its regions into geopolitical zones, which can be found at the following URL: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/global-infrastructure/regions/.
These sovereign clouds where built by Microsoft to fit customer or governmental needs, such as for special compliance and/or data privacy laws. At the moment, the following sovereign clouds are available:
- Microsoft Azure US Department of Defense (DoD)
- Microsoft Azure US Government
- Microsoft Azure China
- Microsoft Cloud Germany
Microsoft Cloud Germany is also special among the sovereign clouds. Because of customer demands, Microsoft built up Microsoft Cloud Germany differently. Microsoft does not operate the cloud in Germany itself; they use a data trustee to operate the cloud for them. Microsoft Azure staff and all Microsoft employees are not allowed to enter the data centers or lay hands on the servers or framework. Everything is operated by the trustee, starting with hardware maintenance up to updates of the framework.
Regions can also have an impact on the performance and availability of some resources. Some services may not be, or are only partially, available in a specific region.
The costs of offered services also vary by region. For reduced latency, it's recommended to choose a region next to the physical location of the consumer. It might also be important to see which legal requirements must be met. This could, for example, result in a deployment only in EU regions, or even regions in specific countries:
- Available Azure regions: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/regions/
- Lists all the services available in specific regions: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/regions/services/