In
cloud computing
Cloud computing is "a paradigm for enabling network access to a scalable and elastic pool of shareable physical or virtual resources with self-service provisioning and administration on-demand," according to International Organization for ...
, an availability zone is a subset of an IT infrastructure system that shares no service-critical components (including power, cooling and access) with any other availability zone. Availability zones are typically geographically separated from one another, to prevent local disasters from acting on more than one availability zone.
Some service providers also make higher-level regional distinctions between availability zones, allowing service providers to mitigate even regional-level disasters such as earthquakes and forest fires.
Applications requiring
high availability
High availability (HA) is a characteristic of a system that aims to ensure an agreed level of operational performance, usually uptime, for a higher than normal period.
There is now more dependence on these systems as a result of modernization ...
are typically implemented as
distributed systems
Distributed computing is a field of computer science that studies distributed systems, defined as computer systems whose inter-communicating components are located on different computer network, networked computers.
The components of a distribu ...
that span multiple availability zones.
Services offering distinct availability zones include
Amazon Web Services
Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS) is a subsidiary of Amazon.com, Amazon that provides Software as a service, on-demand cloud computing computing platform, platforms and Application programming interface, APIs to individuals, companies, and gover ...
,
Microsoft Azure
Microsoft Azure, or just Azure ( /ˈæʒər, ˈeɪʒər/ ''AZH-ər, AY-zhər'', UK also /ˈæzjʊər, ˈeɪzjʊər/ ''AZ-ure, AY-zure''), is the cloud computing platform developed by Microsoft. It has management, access and development of ...
and
Google Cloud
Google Cloud Platform (GCP) is a suite of cloud computing services offered by Google that provides a series of modular cloud services including computing, data storage, data analytics, and machine learning, alongside a set of management tools ...
.
See also
*
Single point of failure
A single point of failure (SPOF) is a part of a system that would Cascading failure, stop the entire system from working if it were to fail. The term single point of failure implies that there is not a backup or redundant option that would enab ...
*
Active redundancy
References
Reliability engineering
Cloud computing
Fault-tolerant computer systems
Distributed computing
Disaster management
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