Exercise 1: The AWS Subnet-Per-Zone Assumption Doesn't Apply — Possible Solution ==================================================================== In AWS, a subnet is bound to exactly one specific Availability Zone -- placing an instance in a particular AZ genuinely requires choosing the matching subnet for that zone, since the subnet-to-zone relationship is fixed and one-to-one. A team with AWS experience naturally applies this same real pattern when working in a new environment: create one subnet per zone, place instances accordingly. Azure's real model works fundamentally differently: a Virtual Network, and every subnet inside it, spans ALL Availability Zones in the region at once. There's no such thing as a "zone-specific subnet" in Azure -- subnet choice and Availability Zone placement are two entirely independent decisions, made separately when a VM is actually created. ANSWER: This approach reflects the AWS-specific assumption that a subnet must correspond to exactly one zone -- a real, structural property of AWS's own VPC model that simply doesn't exist in Azure. In Azure, the team doesn't need three separate subnets at all; a single subnet can host VMs across all three zones, with each VM's own zone assignment specified independently when it's created, not determined by which subnet it happens to sit in. WHY THIS WORKS AS AN ANSWER ------------------------------ This correctly identifies the specific real assumption being carried over incorrectly (subnet-to-zone binding) rather than vaguely saying "Azure networking is different," and explains what the team should actually do instead (one subnet, independent per-VM zone assignment), directly matching the chapter's own explicit framing of this as the chapter's biggest structural difference from AWS.