AWS Global Infrastructure

Estimated time to read: 2 minutes

AWS Global Infrastructure is an expansive and strategic network that ensures high availability, scalability, and security for applications across the globe. It’s composed of Regions, Availability Zones (AZs), Local Zones, Outposts, and Edge Locations, each offering unique capabilities to meet varied needs

• AWS Regions
• AWS Availability Zones
• AWS Data Centers
• AWS Edge Locations Points of Presence

AWS Regions

• AWS has Regions all around the world
• Names can be us-east-1, ap-south-1, eu-west-3…
• A region is a cluster of data centers
• Most AWS services are region-scoped

Availability Zones

1. Each region has many availability zones (usually 3, min is 3, max is 6). Example:
   • ap-south-1a
   • ap-south-1b
   • ap-south-1c
2. Each availability zone (AZ) is one or more discrete data centers with redundant power, networking, and connectivity
3. They’re separate from each other, so that they’re isolated from disasters
4. They’re connected with high bandwidth, ultra-low latency networking

Local Zones

• These are extensions of AWS Regions, located closer to densely populated metropolitan areas.
• They’re ideal for latency-sensitive applications, such as real-time gaming or media production, by keeping workloads near end users without the need for an entire on-premises infrastructure.

AWS Points of Presence (Edge Locations)

• AWS CloudFront, the content delivery network (CDN), leverages over 400 edge locations to deliver low-latency content worldwide.
• This setup is excellent for high-demand applications like video streaming and large-scale media distribution.