An update domain is a logical group of underlying hardware that can undergo maintenance or can be rebooted at the same time. As you create VMs within an availability set, the Azure platform automatically distributes your VMs across these update domains. This approach ensures that at least one instance of your application always remains running as the Azure platform undergoes periodic maintenance. The order of update domains being rebooted may not proceed sequentially during planned maintenance, but only one update domain is rebooted at a time.