Final Answer:
A GCP customer might use resources in several zones within a region for high availability and fault tolerance. This practice involves distributing components of their infrastructure across multiple geographical locations within the same region to ensure resilience in the face of potential failures or disruptions.
Step-by-step explanation:
In cloud computing, individual zones represent distinct data centers with independent power, cooling, and networking. By spreading resources across these zones, the customer mitigates the risk of a single point of failure.
If one zone experiences issues due to hardware failures, maintenance, or other unforeseen circumstances, the system can seamlessly redirect traffic and workloads to operational zones, maintaining continuous service and minimizing downtime.
This approach aligns with the principles of designing robust and reliable cloud architectures, crucial for applications and services that demand high availability. It provides an added layer of security against localized incidents, contributing to a more resilient and fault-tolerant infrastructure.