What is an Availability Zone in cloud architecture?

What is an Availability Zone in cloud architecture?

• A. An AZ is a single data center in a region.
• B. An AZ is an isolated data center within a region.
• C. An AZ is a global network of edge locations.
• D. An AZ is a logically separate account.

Answer: (B)

An Availability Zone is a separate fault-domain inside a cloud region. Each AZ is a physically isolated data center (or group of data centers) with independent power, cooling, and networking, yet connected to other AZs in the same region via high-speed links. This design localizes failures, so if one AZ experiences an issue, resources in other AZs can keep running. To achieve high availability, you place redundant components across multiple AZs and enable failover between them. The other descriptions don’t fit because edge locations describe content delivery networks, a single data center doesn’t capture the idea of multiple isolated paths within a region, and a logically separate account is about access and billing boundaries, not availability zones.

An Availability Zone is a separate fault-domain inside a cloud region. Each AZ is a physically isolated data center (or group of data centers) with independent power, cooling, and networking, yet connected to other AZs in the same region via high-speed links. This design localizes failures, so if one AZ experiences an issue, resources in other AZs can keep running. To achieve high availability, you place redundant components across multiple AZs and enable failover between them. The other descriptions don’t fit because edge locations describe content delivery networks, a single data center doesn’t capture the idea of multiple isolated paths within a region, and a logically separate account is about access and billing boundaries, not availability zones.