AWS Global Infrastructure enables Amazon Services to be hosted in multiple locations world wide. Amazon provides the ability to place resources and data in multiple locations to improve performance, provide fault tolerance, high availability and cost optimization.

Each region is an independent collection of AWS resources in a defined geography.

Each region is a separate geographic area and is completely independent.

Each region is a physical location around the world with cluster data centers.

Each Amazon region is designed to be completely isolated from the other regions & helps achieve the greatest possible fault tolerance and stability.

Communication between regions is across the public Internet and appropriate measures should be taken to protect the data using encryption.

Data transfer between regions is charged at the Internet data transfer rate for both the sending and the receiving instance

Resources aren’t replicated across regions unless done explicitly.

Selection of a Region can be driven from a lot of factors:

Latency – Regions can be selected to be closer to the targeted user base to reduce data latency.

Cost – AWS provides the same set of services across all regions, usually, however the cost would differ from region to region depending upon the cost (due to land, electricity, bandwidth etc) incurred by Amazon and hence can be cheaper in one region compared to the other.

Legal Compliance – Lot of the countries enforce compliance and regulatory requirements for data to reside within the region itself.

Features – As not all the regions provide all the AWS features and services, the region selection can depend on the Services supported by the region.

Each Region consists of multiple, isolated locations known as Availability Zones and each Availability Zone runs on its own physically distinct, independent infrastructure and is engineered to be highly reliable.

Edge locations are locations maintained by AWS through a worldwide network of data centers for the distribution of content.

These locations are located in most of the major cities around the world and are used by CloudFront (CDN) to distribute content to end user to reduce latency.

AWS Local Zones place compute, storage, database, and other select AWS services closer to end-users.

AWS Local Zones allows running highly-demanding applications that require single-digit millisecond latencies to the end-users such as media & entertainment content creation, real-time gaming, reservoir simulations, electronic design automation, and machine learning.

Each AWS Local Zone location is an extension of an AWS Region where latency sensitive applications can be hosted. using AWS services such as EC2, VPC, EBS, File Storage, and ELB in geographic proximity to end-users.

AWS Local Zones provide a high-bandwidth, secure connection between local workloads and those running in the AWS Region, allowing you to seamlessly connect to the full range of in-region services through the same APIs and tool sets.

AWS infrastructure deployments embed AWS compute and storage services within the telecommunications providers’ datacenters and help seamlessly access the breadth of AWS services in the region.

AWS Wavelength brings AWS services to the edge of the 5G network, minimizing the latency to connect to an application from a mobile device.

Application traffic can reach application servers running in Wavelength Zones without leaving the mobile provider’s network reducing the extra network hops to the Internet that can result in latencies of more than 100 milliseconds, preventing customers from taking full advantage of the bandwidth and latency advancements of 5G.

AWS developers can deploy the applications to Wavelength Zones, which enables developers to build applications that deliver single-digit millisecond latencies to mobile devices and end-users.

AWS Wavelength helps deliver applications that require single-digit millisecond latencies such as game and live video streaming, machine learning inference at the edge, and augmented and virtual reality.

AWS Outposts bring native AWS services, infrastructure, and operating models to virtually any data center, co-location space, or on-premises facility.

AWS Outposts provides same AWS APIs, tools, and infrastructure across on-premises and AWS cloud to deliver a truly consistent hybrid experience.

AWS Outposts is designed for connected environments and can be used to support workloads that need to remain on-premises due to low latency or local data processing needs.

IAM

1. Users, Groups, Roles, Accounts – Global

   1. Same AWS accounts, users, groups and roles can be used in all regions.

2. Key Pairs – Global or Regional

   1. Amazon EC2 created key pairs are specific to the region.

   2. RSA key pair can be created and uploaded that can be used in all regions.

Virtual Private Cloud

1. VPC – Regional

   1. VPC are created within a region.

2. Subnet – Availability Zone

   1. Subnet can span only a single Availability Zone.

3. Security groups – Regional

   1. A security group is tied to a region and can be assigned only to instances in the same region.

4. VPC Endpoints – Regional

   1. You cannot create an endpoint between a VPC and an AWS service in a different region.

5. VPC Peering – Regional

   1. VPC Peering can be performed across VPC in the same account of different AWS accounts but only within the same region. They cannot span across regions.

   2. VPC Peering can now span inter-region.

6. Elastic IP Address – Regional

   1. Elastic IP address created within the region can be assigned to instances within the region only.

EC2

1. Resource Identifiers – Regional

   1. Each resource identifier, such as an AMI ID, instance ID, EBS volume ID, or EBS snapshot ID, is tied to its region and can be used only in the region where you created the resource.

2. Instances – Availability Zone

   1. An instance is tied to the Availability Zones in which you launched it. However, note that its instance ID is tied to the region.

3. EBS Volumes – Availability Zone

   1. Amazon EBS volume is tied to its Availability Zone and can be attached only to instances in the same Availability Zone.

4. EBS Snapshot – Regional

   1. An EBS snapshot is tied to its region and can only be used to create volumes in the same region and has to be copied from One region to other if needed.

5. AMIs – Regional

   1. AMI provides templates to launch EC2 instances.

   2. AMI is tied to the Region where its files are located with Amazon S3. For using AMI in different regions, the AMI can be copied to other regions.

6. Auto Scaling – Regional

   1. Auto Scaling spans across multiple Availability Zones within the same region but cannot span across regions.

7. Elastic Load Balancer – Regional

   1. Elastic Load Balancer distributes traffic across instances in multiple Availability Zones in the same region.

8. Cluster Placement Groups – Availability Zone

   1. Cluster Placement groups can be span across Instances within the same Availability Zones.

S3 – Global but Data is Regional

1. S3 buckets are created within the selected region.

2. Objects stored are replicated across Availability Zones to provide high durability but are not cross region replicated unless done explicitly.

Route53 – Global

1. Route53 services are offered at AWS edge locations and are global.

DynamoDb – Regional

1. All data objects are stored within the same region and replicated across multiple Availability Zones in the same region.

2. Data objects can be explicitly replicated across regions using cross-region replication.

WAF – Global

1. Web Application Firewall (WAF) services protects web applications from common web exploits are offered at AWS edge locations and are global.

CloudFront – Global

1. CloudFront is the global content delivery network (CDN) services are offered at AWS edge locations.

Storage Gateway – Regional

1. AWS Storage Gateway stores volume, snapshot, and tape data in the AWS region in which the gateway is activated.