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3 Availability Zones - West US 2 (Moses Lake, Washington)

Kyle Blake 20 Reputation points
2025-01-29T19:15:00.84+00:00

Hello,

Just learning Azure here. I used the global Azure map to view data centers. Focusing on:

(West US 2)

Generally speaking, I see the data center exists in Moses Lake and all my Azure readings say that if one data center goes down (power/network for eg) then your data is in the other 2 data centers. Called an availability zone. Of Which WEST US 2 has "3"

What I'm not understanding is:

q1: Are all 3 datacenters located at one location in Moses Lake ? When I say one location I mean literally 3 buildings but all in one fenced location? Assume yes? Aka 1 mailing address y/n

q2: If not, then are there literally 3 different physical addresses you can go to in Moses lake?

q3: are they less than 100 miles from each other?

Kyle

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  1. Andreas Baumgarten 123.6K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2025-01-29T19:59:28.88+00:00

    Hi @Kyle Blake ,

    as far as I know:

    regarding q3: Yes. Even without knowing the exact details.

    They're connected by a high-performance network with a round-trip latency of less than approximately 2 ms.

    Source: What are availability zones?

    "Round-trip" means the communication from sender to receiver and back to sender.

    regarding q2: The official public address of an Azure region like West US 2 might not reflect the physical location of the datacenter buildings

    regarding q1: Please take a look here in the FAQ section: Azure availability zones -> What is an availability zone

    Azure availability zones are physically and logically separated datacenters with their own independent power source, network, and cooling.

    (If the reply was helpful please don't forget to upvote and/or accept as answer, thank you)

    Regards

    Andreas Baumgarten

    1 person found this answer helpful.

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  1. Kyle Blake 20 Reputation points
    2025-01-29T20:59:06.29+00:00

    Thanks!

    Right it seams the way to think of it is:

    Region West US2

    Has 3 availability zones ( physically and logically separated datacenters with their own independent power source, network, and cooling )

    Exists in Washington State

    Location between zones: General answer : less than 100 miles from each other

    This post had good info:

    https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/1512114/distance-between-azure-zones

    (However, availability zones are far enough apart to reduce the likelihood that more than one will be affected by local outages or weather But the actual distance between datacenters in availability zones is not defined and may vary. MS does not provide this type of information, but guarantees that a problem with one of the datacenters will not affect the other datacenters in the availability zone. If you have stringent parameters, you can consider using a different region for your disaster recovery Azure strives to ensure a minimum distance of 300 miles (483 kilometers) between datacenters in enabled regions, although it isn't possible across all geographies. ref link: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/reliability/cross-region-replication-azure)

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