Microsoft has launched new availability zones in its East Asia Azure cloud region in Hong Kong.

Most Azure regions launch with three availability zones; three unique physically separated locations or “zones” to provide higher availability, redundancy, and disaster recovery protection. However, some launch with single zones and add more later.

It said this week three availability zones in the East Asia region are now generally available.

“Availability Zones give users additional options for high availability for their most demanding applications and services as well as confidence and protection from potential hardware and software failures by providing three or more unique physical locations within an Azure region,” the company said this week.

Microsoft’s Hong Kong/East Asia region launched in 2010. The company launched its first facility in mainland China in 2014 in partnership with VNET (previously 21Vianet).