Resources within a resource group need not always be deployed in the same location as the resource group. But there is a built-in Azure Policy available to audit this condition that one may choose to enable.
The resource group location serves two purposes:
- First: The resource group stores metadata about the resources. When you specify a location for the resource group, you're specifying where that metadata is stored. Now, for compliance reasons, you may need to ensure that your data is stored within a particular region.
- Second: If the resource group's region is temporarily unavailable, you can't update resources in the resource group because the metadata is unavailable. The resources in other regions will still function as expected, but you can't update them.
For knowing more about the factors to consider while defining your resrouce groups, check the Azure Resource Manager documentation.