Have you ever wondered what Azure region would be the fastest to host your applications when those applications are accessed from your office?  Obviously the closest data center would probably be the best choice (each region has multiple data centers), but how do you know what data center is the closest?  And how can you easily confirm the closest data center is the fastest?  Well, I recently discovered a site that can help you with that.  It’s called AzureSpeed, and it has a number of tests to help you:

• Azure Storage Latency Test – Test network latency to Azure Storage in worldwide data centers from your location to determine the best region for your application and users
• Azure Storage Blob Upload Speed Test – Test upload speeds to Azure Blob Storage in worldwide data centers.  Small pre-determined file is uploaded
• Azure Storage Large File Upload Speed Test – Test uploading of a large file to Azure Blob Storage in worldwide data centers, with different upload options (block size, thread).  You choose a file on your computer to upload
• Azure Storage Blob Download Speed Test – Test downloading of a 100MB file from any data center

There is also a Cloud Region Finder that enables you to quickly lookup the cloud and region information of an application deployment by entering the URL.  For example, enter “microsoft.com” and it will return “Azure – North Europe”.