US government agencies or their partners interested in cloud services that meet government security and compliance requirements, can be confident that Microsoft Azure Government provides world-class security and compliance. Azure Government delivers a dedicated cloud enabling government agencies and their partners to transform mission-critical workloads to the cloud. Azure Government services can accommodate data that is subject to various US government regulations and requirements.
To provide you with the highest level of security and compliance, Azure Government uses physically isolated datacenters and networks located in the US only. Compared to Azure global, Azure Government provides an extra layer of protection to customers through contractual commitments regarding storage of customer data in the US and limiting potential access to systems processing customer data to screened US persons.
Azure Government customers (US federal, state, and local government or their partners) are subject to validation of eligibility. If there's a question about eligibility for Azure Government, you should consult your account team. To sign up for trial, request your trial subscription.
The following video provides a good introduction to Azure Government:
There are some key differences that developers working on applications hosted in Azure Government must be aware of. For detailed information, see Guidance for developers. As a developer, you must know how to connect to Azure Government and once you connect you'll mostly have the same experience as in global Azure. To see feature variations and usage limitations between Azure Government and global Azure, see Compare Azure Government and global Azure and click on individual service.
Region pairing
Azure relies on paired regions to deliver geo-redundant storage. The following table shows the primary and secondary region pairings in Azure Government.
Geography
Regional Pair A
Regional Pair B
US Government
US Gov Arizona
US Gov Texas
US Government
US Gov Virginia
US Gov Texas
Get started
To start using Azure Government, first check out Guidance for developers. Then, use one of the following guides that show you how to connect to Azure Government: