AWS Global Infrastructure (Regions and AZs) (2/2)

(Note: This is second medium blog of AWS series. New readers refer to the first blog here.)

What does Infrastructure refer to?

Here, Infrastructure is the data centers . This data centers are foundation of cloud computing.

What is a data center?

A data center is a physical room, building or facility that houses IT infrastructure for building, running, and delivering applications and services, and for storing and managing the data associated with those applications and services.

Cloud data centers (also called cloud computing data centers) provide IT infrastructure resources for multiple customers via an Internet connection. Here, Amazon Web Services(AWS) comes into picture which is one of the major cloud service providers.

So, AWS has many data centers present in various parts of the world that makes up AWS global infrastructure. AWS Global Infrastructure is in the form of Regions and Availability Zones.

Regions:

Regions are geographic location all over the world where AWS data centers are present. Regions are named after the location where they reside. For example, in the United States, the Region in Northern Virginia is called the Northern Virginia Region, and the Region in Oregon is called the Oregon Region.

AWS Regions

Each AWS Region is associated with a geographical name and a Region code.

Here are examples of Region codes:

• us-east-1 is the first Region created in the eastern US area. The geographical name for this Region is N. Virginia.
• ap-northeast-1 is the first Region created in the northeast Asia Pacific area. The geographical name for this Region is Tokyo.

Regions supported by AWS can be seen in Console.

Choosing Right AWS Region:

AWS Regions are independent from one another. When you decide which AWS Region to host your applications and workloads, consider following four main aspects:

1. Latency : Latency is the delay between a request for data and the response. If the applications requires high latency choose a Region that is close to your user base. This helps prevent long wait times for your customers.
2. Price : AWS charges based on the financial factors specific to each Region. Due to the local economy and the physical nature of operating data centers, prices vary from one Region to another.
3. Service Availability : Some services might not be available in some Regions. The AWS documentation provides a table that shows the services available in each Region.
4. Data Compliance :Enterprise companies often must comply with regulations that require customer data to be stored in a specific geographic territory. If applicable, choose a Region that meets your compliance requirements.

Availability Zones:

Inside every Region is a cluster of Availability Zones. An Availability Zone consists of one or more data centers with redundant power, networking, and connectivity.

Availability Zones also have code names. Because they are located inside Regions, they can be addressed by appending a letter to the end of the Region code name. Here are examples of Availability Zone codes:

• us-east-1a is an Availability Zone in us-east-1 (N. Virginia Region).
• sa-east-1b is an Availability Zone in sa-east-1 (São Paulo Region).

Region and AZs

Depending on the AWS service that you use, your resources are either deployed at the Availability Zone, Region, or Global level. Each service is different, so you must understand how the scope of a service might affect your application architecture.

To keep your application available, you must maintain high availability and resiliency. A well-known best practice for cloud architecture is to use Region-scoped, managed services.

When that is not possible, make sure your workload is replicated across multiple Availability Zones. At a minimum, you should use two Availability Zones. That way, if an Availability Zone fails, your application will have infrastructure up and running in a second Availability Zone to take over the traffic.