AWS Availability Zones and Regions

In this lesson, you are going to learn about AWS Regions and Availability Zones.

AWS Regions

An AWS Region is a large, geographically dispersed area that consists of multiple data centers. Each Region is completely independent and isolated from the others and has its own set of Availability Zones (AZs).

You can see a map that displays the location of each AWS Region at the time of this writing. Green equals available now, red equals coming soon. You can also view the regions on the official AWS website here.

AWS Regions depicted on a global map

When you create an AWS resource, you need to choose the AWS Region where the resource will be created. AWS Regions are physically separated locations around the world that are designed to be isolated from failures in other regions.

There are a few factors to consider when deciding which AWS Region to use:

1. Latency : If you have users or applications that will be accessing your resources from a specific geographic location, you should choose a region that is closest to them to minimize latency.
2. Cost : The cost of using AWS services can vary by region. If cost is a concern for you, you may want to compare the prices of different regions before making a decision.
3. Service availability : Different AWS services are available in different regions, and the availability of a specific service may be a factor in your decision. You can check the AWS service availability page to see which services are available in each region. More info here.
4. Disaster recovery : If you are using AWS for disaster recovery, you may want to choose a region that is geographically distant from your primary region to reduce the risk of b…