Default distance while creating collection

While creating collection, what happens if dont mention the vector_index_config, is the default distance_metric “Cosine”
Is it neccesary for me to mention vector_index_config, if am using text2vec_azure_openai and let weaviate create embedding on its own using the cred i give it, wont it by default use Cosine distance metric when I query from collection

Got below from doc

client.collections.create(
    "Article",
    # Additional configuration not shown
    vector_index_config=Configure.VectorIndex.hnsw(
        quantizer=Configure.VectorIndex.Quantizer.bq(),
        ef_construction=300,
        distance_metric=VectorDistances.COSINE,
        filter_strategy=VectorFilterStrategy.SWEEPING  # or ACORN (Available from Weaviate v1.27.0)
    ),
)

My next question is: are the created embeddings from Weaviate normalized.

Thanks.