Reliability and predictability are enable businesses to commit to consistent service delivery for their customers. These attributes ensure that applications remain functional, data remains intact, and unexpected failures are handled effectively.
Reliability in Azure
Reliability refers to the ability of Azure to recover from failures, such as data loss, downtime, or security incidents like ransomware attacks. The cloud provides robust fault tolerance and disaster recovery mechanisms that help businesses maintain operations even when unexpected issues occur.
Predictability in Azure
Predictability ensures that businesses can anticipate and plan for the performance of their cloud infrastructure. A highly available architecture is necessary for predictable operations, ensuring consistent uptime and performance for mission-critical applications.
Key Features Supporting Reliability and Predictability
Azure offers various features that enhance system reliability and ensure predictable performance:
- Azure Storage and Databases: Data replication across availability zones (which deploy services across multiple buildings) and regions (across geographical locations) enhances fault tolerance. For more, see about availability zones, see #16#. For more about regions, see #15#.
- Managed Disks: These are automatically distributed across different storage units, reducing the impact of hardware failures.
- Virtual Machines (VMs) and Fault Domains: VMs can be placed across multiple fault domains, ensuring that if a hardware failure occurs, its effects are limited to only a subset of VMs. For more about Virtual Machines, please see #23 and 24#.
- Application Resiliency: Businesses must design applications with resiliency in mind, ensuring that if one device fails, connections automatically shift to a different device to maintain continuity.
For more insights into disaster recovery strategies, refer to #30#.
Conclusion
Reliability and predictability ensure that businesses can trust their cloud infrastructure to perform consistently and recover quickly from failures. Azure provides robust mechanisms to manage unexpected disruptions, reducing downtime and ensuring seamless operations.
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