Will Azure Extended Zones be substitute for Availability Zone in future?

Question

Currently, Azure/Microsoft is announcing the public preview of the Los Angeles Azure Extended Zone.

When the text "Zone" comes and it supports VM, typically a question arise to compare it with the existing availability zone?

1. Am I comparing the correct services Azure Extended Zones vs Availability Zone?
2. If #1 yes, Will Azure Extended Zones be substitute for Availability Zone in future?

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Hi @Shanmugam s

You are right. When a new service is announced that includes the term "zone" and supports VMs, it is natural to compare it with the existing availability zones.

Azure Extended Zones and Availability Zones are both designed to provide high availability and resiliency for VMs running in Azure. However, there are some differences between the two services.

Availability Zones are physically separate datacenters within an Azure region, each with independent power, cooling, and networking. This provides protection against datacenter-level failures, such as power outages or network failures. When you deploy VMs in an availability zone, they are automatically replicated to other zones within the same region for additional resiliency.

Azure Extended Zones, on the other hand, are a new type of Azure zone that provides a higher level of resiliency than a single datacenter, but not as much as an availability zone. An Azure Extended Zone is a group of datacenters within a single region that are located far enough apart to provide resiliency against disasters such as earthquakes, floods, or fires. VMs deployed in an Azure Extended Zone are replicated across multiple datacenters within the same region for additional resiliency.

In terms of substituting one service for the other, it is unlikely that Azure Extended Zones will replace Availability Zones in the future. Availability Zones provide a higher level of resiliency than Azure Extended Zones, and are designed to protect against datacenter-level failures. Azure Extended Zones are designed to provide resiliency against disasters that affect an entire region, but do not provide the same level of protection against datacenter-level failures.

In summary, both Azure Extended Zones and Availability Zones provide high availability and resiliency for VMs running in Azure, but they are designed to address different types of failures. It is important to choose the service that best meets your specific needs for resiliency and availability.

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