Azure's core architecture combines physical infrastructure (Datacenters, Regions, Zones) with a management layer (Azure Resource Manager, Resource Groups, Subscriptions, Management Groups) for organizing and controlling cloud resources like VMs, Storage, and Networks, all built upon foundational services for Compute, Storage, and Networking to deliver scalable IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS solutions globally.
Physical Infrastructure (Global Scale)
Datacenters: Physical buildings housing servers, storage, and networking equipment.
Regions: Geographic areas containing multiple datacenters, offering low latency and data sovereignty, with paired regions for disaster recovery.
Availability Zones (AZs): Physically separate locations within a region, each with independent power, cooling, and networking, for high availability.
Management & Organization (Hierarchical)
Azure Resource Manager (ARM): The deployment and management service for creating, updating, and deleting resources.
Resources: The fundamental building blocks (VMs, databases, storage) that form your solution.
Resource Groups: Logical containers to group related resources for unified lifecycle management, access control, and billing.
Subscriptions: A logical container for resources, tied to billing and access, used to organize different environments or projects.
Management Groups: Higher-level containers that allow applying governance (policies, access) across multiple subscriptions.
Foundational Services (The Building Blocks)
Compute: Virtual Machines (VMs), Containers (AKS), Serverless (Functions).
Storage: Blob, File, Queue, Table storage, managed disks.
Networking: Virtual Networks (VNets), Load Balancers, VPNs, DNS.
These components work together, managed by ARM, to build resilient, scalable, and secure cloud solutions across Azure's global footprint.
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