What is Microsoft Azure Availability Set?

1. Pre-requisite Knowledge –

Before we start with the understanding of what is Microsoft Azure Availability Set, we should know –

• Basic knowledge of cloud computing and its services
• Basic knowledge of Microsoft Azure
• Basic knowledge of Virtual Machine

2. Background –

In this article, we will explore what is Microsoft Azure Availability Set. Before we look into it, let’s understand -

• When we create the virtual machines in the Microsoft Azure cloud then it is important to think about the availability of the virtual machine’s hardware and software.
• It is dependent on how much percent of the time your application needs to available and accessible to keep business continuity. It can not be 100% in some cases.
• The availability of the virtual machine may impact because of the fault domain and update domain.
• The fault domain refers to unexpected hardware failure.
• Update domain refers to predetermined software updates on Azure.
• There can be hardware crash, power supply issues, hard disc crash, motherboard issues, etc.
• Also, there can software issues such as updating the operating system which needs to be rebooted, operating system security updates, etc.
• In this situation, we need to isolate the virtual machines in the Azure data center, scale-out the application with the load balancer.
• To make your application with high availability even with the failures then we should have availability set feature in place for Azure virtual machines.

3. Introduction of Microsoft Azure Availability Set –

• Azure Availability Set is a logical grouping capability for isolating Virtual Machines from each other when they are deployed in the Azure data center.
• When we put our Azure virtual machine in the availability set feature then VMs are split into multiple fault and update domains so that hardware failure or software updates should not impact other virtual machines at the same time.
• By default, Azure allocates the three fault domains and five update domains.
• This limit can increase up to 20.
• Microsoft offers 99.99% uptime for the servers in an Availability Set.
• Microsoft recommends using the availability set feature to keep applications with high availability.
• Availability Sets are critical for building reliable cloud solutions
  
  

4. Create an availability set with a virtual machine with Azure PowerShell
   
   
5. Reference Links –

• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-machines/windows/tutorial-availability-sets
• https://dev.to/kenakamu/azure-vs-gcp-part-10-virtual-machine---scaling-azure--4ci0
• https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/architecting-microsoft-azure/9781788991735/d929b156-0f27-40bb-a112-7c775a8e35f7.xhtml

Conclusion - In this article, we have learned the overview of Microsoft Azure Availability Set.