Microsoft.ServiceBus namespaces - zoneRedundant value doesn't seem to match with documentation

Question

We have been deploying Microsoft.ServiceBus namespaces in our subscriptions for a long time.

We never set the zoneRedundant property. Refer docs for the property.

But all our deployed Service Bus Namespace resources show it to be true in json view as well as Standard sku:

    "properties": {
        "zoneRedundant": true
// other properties have been removed in this example
    },
    "sku": {
        "name": "Standard",
        "tier": "Standard"
    },

The document suggests:

zoneRedundantEnabling this property creates a Premium Service Bus Namespace in regions supported availability zones.We deploy to West Europe & Central US, both support Availability Zones as per documentation.

• So why is our Service Bus Namespace still a Standard SKU?
• We want it to be standard and not a premium SKU. The concern is whether this can change on Azure side and start charging us for the premium SKU, or fail our deployments?

Repro steps:

• Download the ARM template sb.txt and rename extension to json
• Run commands

    az group create --name sbtestrg --location westeurope
    az deployment group create --resource-group sbtestrg --template-file sb.json
    
    
  

  This will create a standard SKU service bus namespace in westeurope with "zoneRedundant": true.

Answer 1

Dear Dushyant,

Thank you for reaching out with your question on the Q&A portal. I appreciate the detailed explanation and the steps you provided to reproduce the issue. It’s great to see such a thorough approach to troubleshooting.

Regarding your concern about the zoneRedundant property in your Service Bus Namespace, I understand why this might be confusing. Even though the documentation mentions that enabling zoneRedundant typically applies to Premium SKUs, your Standard SKU namespace still shows this property as true. Rest assured, this does not mean your namespace will be automatically upgraded to Premium SKU or incur higher charges. The Standard SKU does not support zone redundancy, so this property being set to true is likely a default or placeholder value and won’t affect your billing or deployments.

If you want to ensure your namespace remains Standard and avoid any ambiguity, you can explicitly set zoneRedundant to false in your ARM template. Azure will not override your SKU selection based on this property alone.

For further clarity, I recommend checking out these Microsoft articles:

Service Bus pricing tiers

ARM template reference for Service Bus

If you have any follow-up questions or need additional assistance, feel free to ask.

Best regards,
Alex

P.S. If my answer helped you, please Accept my answer.