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What is Azure Government?

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US government agencies or their partners interested in cloud services that meet government security and compliance requirements, can be confident that Microsoft Azure Government provides world-class security and compliance. Azure Government delivers a dedicated cloud enabling government agencies and their partners to transform mission-critical workloads to the cloud. Azure Government services can accommodate data that is subject to various US government regulations and requirements.

To provide you with the highest level of security and compliance, Azure Government uses physically isolated datacenters and networks located in the US only. Compared to Azure global, Azure Government provides an extra layer of protection to customers through contractual commitments regarding storage of customer data in the US and limiting potential access to systems processing customer data to screened US persons.

Azure Government customers (US federal, state, and local government or their partners) are subject to validation of eligibility. If there's a question about eligibility for Azure Government, you should consult your account team. To sign up for trial, request your trial subscription.

The following video provides a good introduction to Azure Government:


Compare Azure Government and global Azure

Azure Government offers Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) cloud service models based on the same underlying technologies as global Azure. For service availability in Azure Government, see Products available by region. Services available in Azure Government are listed by category and whether they're Generally Available or available through Preview.

There are some key differences that developers working on applications hosted in Azure Government must be aware of. For detailed information, see Guidance for developers. As a developer, you must know how to connect to Azure Government and once you connect you'll mostly have the same experience as in global Azure. To see feature variations and usage limitations between Azure Government and global Azure, see Compare Azure Government and global Azure and click on individual service.

Region pairing

Azure relies on paired regions to deliver geo-redundant storage. The following table shows the primary and secondary region pairings in Azure Government.

Geography Regional Pair A Regional Pair B
US Government US Gov Arizona US Gov Texas
US Government US Gov Virginia US Gov Texas

Get started

To start using Azure Government, first check out Guidance for developers. Then, use one of the following guides that show you how to connect to Azure Government:

Next steps