Define geographies

November 08, 2020

1 min read

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Azure divides the world into geographies that are defined by geopolitical boundaries or country borders. An Azure geography is a discrete market typically containing two or more regions that preserves data residency and compliance boundaries.

This division has several benefits.

Geographies allow customers with specific data residency and compliance needs to keep their data and applications close.
Geographies ensure that data residency, sovereignty, compliance, and resiliency requirements are honored within geographical boundaries.
Geographies are fault-tolerant to withstand complete region failure through their connection to dedicated high-capacity networking infrastructure.

Data residency refers to the physical or geographic location of an organization’s data or information. It defines the legal or regulatory requirements imposed on data based on the country or region in which it resides and is an important consideration when planning out your application data storage.