AWS Infrastructure: Regions, Availability Zones, and Data Centers

AWS Infrastructure: Regions, Availability Zones, and Data Centers

AWS has built a global cloud infrastructure using three main components: Regions, Availability Zones, and Data Centers. Each serves a specific role in delivering reliable cloud services to customers worldwide.

Data Centers

Data centers are the physical buildings where AWS hosts its computing hardware, networking equipment, and storage systems. These facilities have:

  • Redundant power supplies
  • Advanced cooling systems
  • Strong physical security
  • High-speed network connections
  • Backup systems

AWS runs multiple data centers in each geographic area to maintain reliable service. These buildings contain thousands of servers and other equipment needed to run cloud services.

Availability Zones - Groups of Data Centers

An Availability Zone is one or more discrete data centers with independent and redundant power infrastructure, networking, and connectivity.

Each AZ functions independently from other AZs, even within the same region. This design offers several benefits:

  • If one AZ has problems, others stay operational
  • Data and services can be duplicated across zones for backup
  • Companies can run identical systems in different zones for reliability
  • Each zone has its own power, cooling, and networking

AWS links all AZs in a region with high-speed, private networking. This allows customers to distribute their workloads across multiple zones while keeping fast communication between systems.

Regions - Groups of Availability Zones

Each AWS Region consists of multiple independent and physically separate Availability Zones within a geographic area.

  • Operates independently from other regions
  • Has at least three Availability Zones
  • Offers all major AWS services
  • Follows local laws and regulations
  • Has unique pricing for services

As of 2024, AWS runs 34 Regions worldwide. Each Region has a specific code, such as us-east-1 for the Northern Virginia Region or eu-west-1 for the Ireland Region.

Global Single-Region Operations

Unlike fully global services, these operations depend on a single region for coordination or processing, regardless of where the resources are located.

Global services, like Amazon Route 53 (DNS Service) and AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM), operate across regions however unlike fully global services, these operations depend on a single region for coordination or processing, regardless of where the resources are located. During a failure impacting the underlying global dependency, you may be unable to use some actions of the dependent operations via the AWS Console or AWS APIs. If you have taken dependencies on these operations in your recovery strategy, that strategy may be less likely to succeed than if you only rely on the data plane of these services. You should avoid dependencies on these operations for your recovery strategy.

Further Reading

To learn more on the specifics of AWS and it's infrastructure we recommend reading the AWS documentation and whitepapers:

Posted on Monday, January 27, 2025

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