Azure has data centers spread around the world. Close by data-centers are grouped into regions. A region usually consists of 3 data centers, also known as availability zones. These zones are interconnected with high-speed fiber with a round-trip latency of less than 2 ms. You can explore the different regions Azure offer at https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/global-infrastructure/geographies/#geographies.
To list regions using the az command line utility run the following command.
$ az account list-locations --query [].displayName
[
"East US",
"East US 2",
"South Central US",
"West US 2",
"West US 3",
"Australia East",
"Southeast Asia",
"North Europe",
"Sweden Central",
"UK South",
"West Europe",
"Central US",
...
]Azure also offers special types of clouds such as the US Government cloud. These are called sovereign clouds. You can list the Azure clouds using the az command line utility.
$ az cloud list --query [].name
[
"AzureCloud",
"AzureChinaCloud",
"AzureUSGovernment",
"AzureGermanCloud"
]You should design for failure which basically means when it comes to regions you should deploy your services in multiple regions. Azure offer something known as paired regions. Regions are paired for cross-region replication.
Read more at: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/availability-zones/cross-region-replication-azure