By David,
Azure availability zones are separate groups of datacenters within one Azure region, each with "independent power, cooling, and networking infrastructure", typically several kilometers apart and usually within 100 kilometers of each other. Regions that support zones have at least three. Spreading resources across zones protects them from a datacenter-level failure, though not from the loss of a whole region. Below is every public Azure region with its zone count, the regions without zones, and how zones apply to Azure Virtual Desktop.
The short version: 42 of the 59 public regions in our data have availability zones (most have three; East US 2 lists four). Use a zoned region for production AVD, deploy session hosts across zones when you create the host pool, and put FSLogix profiles on zone-redundant storage (ZRS). Data transfer between zones in the same region isn't charged, and Microsoft aims for round-trip latency between zones under about 2 milliseconds.
The tables come from the same dated data as our Azure regions directory, transcribed from Microsoft Learn and last checked on 2026-11-08.
How availability zones work
From Microsoft's availability zones overview:
- What a zone is. "A logical grouping of one or more physically separate datacenters within a region." Zones are "typically separated by several kilometers, and usually are within 100 kilometers of each other."
- Latency. "Microsoft strives to achieve an inter-zone communication with round-trip latency of less than approximately 2 milliseconds."
- Updates. "Microsoft aims to deploy updates to Azure services within a single availability zone at a time."
- Cost of traffic between zones. "Azure doesn't charge for data transfer between availability zones in the same region, whether you use private or public IP addressing."
- The limit. "Availability zones don't protect against a full-region outage." For that you need a second region; see Azure region pairs.
Zone-redundant, zonal and nonzonal resources
| Type | What it means | Who handles a zone outage |
|---|---|---|
| Zone-redundant | The service replicates or distributes the resource across zones | Microsoft: "Microsoft manages failover to another zone automatically" |
| Zonal | Deployed to one zone you pick, such as a VM in zone 2 | You: "Zonal deployments don't automatically provide resiliency" |
| Nonzonal | No zone chosen; "Azure might place nonzonal resources across any zones in the region" | No zone-level protection |
Logical zones aren't the same in every subscription
"Physical zones are mapped to logical zones in your Azure subscription, and different subscriptions might have a different mapping order." Zone 1 in one subscription can be a different datacenter from zone 1 in another. If you deploy across subscriptions and need to line zones up, az account list-locations returns each region's availabilityZoneMappings for your subscription (availability zones overview).
Azure regions with availability zones
| Region | Programmatic name | Geography | Availability zones |
|---|---|---|---|
| East US | eastus | United States | 3 |
| East US 2 | eastus2 | United States | 4 (some in preview) |
| Central US | centralus | United States | 3 |
| North Central US | northcentralus | United States | 3 (some in preview) |
| South Central US | southcentralus | United States | 3 |
| West US 2 | westus2 | United States | 3 |
| West US 3 | westus3 | United States | 3 |
| Canada Central | canadacentral | Canada | 3 |
| Mexico Central | mexicocentral | Mexico | 3 |
| Brazil South | brazilsouth | Brazil | 3 |
| Chile Central | chilecentral | Chile | 3 |
| North Europe | northeurope | Europe | 3 |
| West Europe | westeurope | Europe | 3 |
| UK South | uksouth | United Kingdom | 3 |
| France Central | francecentral | France | 3 |
| Germany West Central | germanywestcentral | Germany | 3 |
| Switzerland North | switzerlandnorth | Switzerland | 3 |
| Norway East | norwayeast | Norway | 3 |
| Sweden Central | swedencentral | Sweden | 3 |
| Denmark East | denmarkeast | Denmark | 3 |
| Poland Central | polandcentral | Poland | 3 |
| Austria East | austriaeast | Austria | 3 |
| Belgium Central | belgiumcentral | Belgium | 3 |
| Italy North | italynorth | Italy | 3 |
| Spain Central | spaincentral | Spain | 3 |
| UAE North | uaenorth | UAE | 3 |
| Qatar Central | qatarcentral | Qatar | 3 |
| Israel Central | israelcentral | Israel | 3 |
| South Africa North | southafricanorth | South Africa | 3 |
| East Asia | eastasia | Asia Pacific | 3 |
| Southeast Asia | southeastasia | Asia Pacific | 3 |
| Japan East | japaneast | Japan | 3 |
| Japan West | japanwest | Japan | 3 |
| Korea Central | koreacentral | Korea | 3 |
| Central India | centralindia | India | 3 |
| India South Central | indiasouthcentral | India | 3 |
| Indonesia Central | indonesiacentral | Indonesia | 3 |
| Malaysia West | malaysiawest | Malaysia | 3 |
| Southeast Asia 3 (preview) | southeastasia3 | Malaysia | 3 |
| Taiwan North (preview) | taiwannorth | Taiwan | 3 |
| Australia East | australiaeast | Australia | 3 |
| New Zealand North | newzealandnorth | New Zealand | 3 |
"Some in preview" means Microsoft marks one or more of that region's zones as in preview.
Azure regions without availability zones
These regions have no availability zones. Most are the partner of a zoned region in their geography:
| Region | Programmatic name | Geography | Paired region |
|---|---|---|---|
| West Central US | westcentralus | United States | West US 2 |
| West US | westus | United States | East US |
| Canada East | canadaeast | Canada | Canada Central |
| Brazil Southeast (restricted) | brazilsoutheast | Brazil | Brazil South |
| UK West | ukwest | United Kingdom | UK South |
| France South (restricted) | francesouth | France | France Central |
| Germany North (restricted) | germanynorth | Germany | Germany West Central |
| Switzerland West (restricted) | switzerlandwest | Switzerland | Switzerland North |
| Norway West (restricted) | norwaywest | Norway | Norway East |
| UAE Central (restricted) | uaecentral | UAE | UAE North |
| South Africa West (restricted) | southafricawest | South Africa | South Africa North |
| Korea South | koreasouth | Korea | Korea Central |
| South India | southindia | India | Central India |
| West India | westindia | India | South India |
| Australia Southeast | australiasoutheast | Australia | Australia East |
| Australia Central | australiacentral | Australia | Australia Central 2 |
| Australia Central 2 (restricted) | australiacentral2 | Australia | Australia Central |
For Azure Government, Microsoft lists zone support for US Gov Virginia only; see Azure Government regions.
Availability zones and Azure Virtual Desktop
AVD splits the work. Microsoft runs the AVD service itself with "at least six distinct and separate instances or clusters of each component" in each region, and stores its regional database's replicas "across availability zones" (AVD service architecture and resilience). The session hosts are yours: "You're responsible for creating and managing session hosts... the resiliency, and the backup and recovery of those session hosts."
Session hosts. When you create a host pool, the Availability options let you "select from availability zones, availability set, or No infrastructure redundancy required" (deploy AVD). Microsoft's architecture guidance is to "spread Azure Virtual Desktop session hosts across different availability zones" "to achieve higher resiliency and a formal 99.99% high-availability SLA" (multi-region BCDR).
FSLogix profiles. "An Azure Files share can provide zone resiliency by using the ZRS resiliency option if it's available in the region." A zonal host pool with profiles on locally redundant storage still loses every profile if that one datacenter goes down. See choosing FSLogix storage.
What zones aren't. Microsoft's AVD guidance says not to treat zones as a disaster recovery solution, and "Azure Virtual Desktop doesn't have any native features for managing disaster recovery scenarios" (AVD disaster recovery concepts). Zones cover a datacenter; a second region covers a region.
A practical checklist.
- Pick a region from the zoned table above, close to your users.
- Create the host pool with Availability zones selected, so hosts land in more than one zone.
- Plan capacity so the remaining zones can carry the load if one zone is lost, either with spare hosts or with headroom for scaling.
- Put FSLogix profiles on ZRS Azure Files.
- Check your VM size is offered in every zone you use:
az vm list-skus --location <region> --size <size> --zone --output table. See Azure VM SKU availability by region.
How Atlas AVD helps
Atlas AVD deploys and scales session hosts in the regions and host pools you choose, and its autoscale engine adds and removes hosts to match demand. It doesn't change how Azure places a zonal VM: zone choice stays part of your host pool design.
FAQ
What is an Azure availability zone?
A group of one or more physically separate datacenters within an Azure region, with independent power, cooling and networking. Regions with zones have at least three.
Which Azure regions have availability zones?
As of 2026-11-08, 42 public regions in our data do, listed in the table above. Most have three; East US 2 lists four.
Do availability zones cost extra?
Microsoft doesn't charge for data transfer between availability zones in the same region. The resources you deploy in each zone are billed as usual.
Are availability zones a disaster recovery solution?
No. They protect against a datacenter failure within a region, not a full-region outage. Microsoft's AVD guidance says not to treat them as disaster recovery.
Is zone 1 the same datacenter in every subscription?
No. Physical zones are mapped to logical zones per subscription, and the mapping can differ. Use az account list-locations to see yours.
Zone counts are from Microsoft's list of Azure regions, last checked on 2026-11-08. Zone behavior is from the availability zones overview, and AVD guidance from AVD service architecture and resilience, deploy AVD, the multi-region AVD architecture and AVD disaster recovery concepts, as of November 2026.