AWS Global Infrastructure

AWS Global Infrastructure
│
├── Regions (geographic areas)
│   ├── Availability Zones (isolated data centers)
│
├── Edge Locations (CDN caching)
│
├── Local Zones (near cities)
│
├── Wavelength Zones (in telecom 5G networks)
│
└── Outposts (AWS on-premises)

https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/global-infrastructure/regions_az/

Regions:

What it is: A Region is a geographic area where AWS has multiple Availability Zones (AZs). Each region is independent for security, compliance, and fault isolation.

Example:

• us-east-1 → Northern Virginia, USA

• eu-west-2 → London, UK

Key Facts:

• Regions are physically separated (hundreds of miles apart in some cases).

• Each region has its own pricing and services (some services aren’t available in all regions).

• You choose a region based on:

  • Latency → closer to your users = faster.

  • Compliance → e.g., GDPR in Europe.

  • Cost → some regions are cheaper than others.

Pro Tip (Portfolio Worthy): Keep multi-region architecture diagrams in your portfolio showing disaster recovery with Route 53 failover.

Availability Zones (AZs)

What it is: An AZ is one or more data centers within a region, each with independent power, cooling, and networking.

Example:

• us-east-1a, us-east-1b, us-east-1c

• All in the same region but physically separate.

Why it matters: If one AZ goes down (power outage, fire, fiber cut), others in the region stay up. AWS recommends running workloads in at least 2 AZs for High Availability.

Real-world analogy: Think of a region as a city, and each AZ as a separate neighborhood with its own power grid.

Edge Locations

What it is: Small AWS data centers close to users for low-latency content delivery. Used by Amazon CloudFront (CDN) to cache data.

Example:

• You’re in London → CloudFront delivers your web content from a London edge location instead of waiting for it from us-east-1.

Why it matters: Improves speed for users around the world.

Local Zones

What it is: AWS infrastructure close to large cities to run low-latency workloads. Connects back to the parent region for full AWS service access.

Example:

• AWS Los Angeles Local Zone for video editing studios needing ultra-low latency.

Wavelength Zones

What it is: AWS infrastructure embedded in 5G telecom networks for ultra-low latency mobile apps.

Example: Gaming, AR/VR apps with milliseconds latency.

Outposts

What it is: AWS hardware racks installed in your own data center to run AWS services on-premises but connected to AWS Cloud.

Key Points :

• Always multi-AZ for critical workloads.

• Use multi-region for disaster recovery.

• Leverage edge locations for global performance.

• Place compute close to data to reduce latency and cost.

• Use private connectivity (AWS Direct Connect) for secure, high-speed enterprise links.

• Always multi-AZ for critical workloads.

• Use multi-region for disaster recovery.

• Leverage edge locations for global performance.

• Place compute close to data to reduce latency and cost.

• Use private connectivity (AWS Direct Connect) for secure, high-speed enterprise links.

AWS Global Accelerator

• What it is: A networking service that improves global application availability and performance by routing traffic through AWS’s global backbone network.

• How it works:

  • You get static Anycast IPs (public).

  • User traffic enters the nearest AWS edge location.

  • AWS then routes it through its private backbone to the nearest healthy AWS Region endpoint.

Is it part of AWS Regional Infrastructure?

Not exactly. Here’s why

• Region vs Global Services

  • Most AWS services are regional (e.g., EC2, RDS, S3 buckets live in a region).

  • Some are global services (e.g., IAM, Route 53, CloudFront, Global Accelerator).

• Global Accelerator belongs to the global networking layer, not a single region.

  • It spans multiple AWS regions.

  • Its static IPs are global and don’t change if you switch regions.

  • However, the endpoints it routes to (EC2, ALB, NLB, etc.) are regional.

  In short:

• Global Accelerator = Global networking service.

• It sits above AWS regional infrastructure and connects users to regional endpoints through AWS’s private network.

AWS Regional vs. Global Services

Regional Services

• Definition: Operate within a specific AWS Region and are isolated from other regions.

• Key Characteristics:

  • Data Residency: Data and resources are confined to a single region.

  • Availability Zones: Utilize multiple Availability Zones within the region for high availability.

  • Examples: Amazon EC2, Amazon RDS, Amazon S3 (buckets), Amazon VPC.

Global Services

• Definition: Span across all AWS Regions and are not confined to a single region.

• Key Characteristics:

  • Global Reach: Accessible from any region, often with a global endpoint.

  • Control Plane: Some have a centralized control plane in a specific region (e.g., IAM in us-east-1), but their data planes are global.

  • Examples: Amazon CloudFront, AWS IAM, Amazon Route 53.

AWS Regional Services

Definition:

• Services that exist inside a single AWS Region.

• Data, resources, and endpoints are region-specific.

• You must choose a region when creating or using them.

• Isolation: If one region has an outage, other regions are unaffected.

Key Points:

• Supports high availability within a region (with Availability Zones).

• Can be made public or private, depending on configuration.

Category	Service	Public / Private Notes
Compute	EC2	Private if no public IP; public if you assign one or behind ALB/NLB
Compute	ECS / EKS	Private if tasks/pods are in private subnets
Storage	S3 (regional bucket)	Can restrict to VPC endpoint (private) or public via internet
Storage	EBS	Private (inside VPC)
Databases	RDS / Aurora / DynamoDB	Can be public or private depending on subnet
Networking	VPC	Private by default
Networking	Elastic Load Balancer (ALB/NLB)	Public if internet-facing; private if internal
Security	KMS	Regional; can be accessed privately via VPC endpoint
Security	Secrets Manager	Regional; private via VPC endpoint
Analytics	EMR, Redshift	Regional; endpoints can be private/public
Application	CloudWatch, CloudTrail	Regional logs, metrics; API can be public

AWS Global Services

Definition:

• Services that span all regions automatically.

• No need to choose a single region.

• Manage users, policies, or traffic globally.

• Often internet-facing or globally accessible, but can interact with private regional resources.

Key Points:

• Typically used for identity, DNS, traffic routing, content delivery, global acceleration.

• Not tied to Availability Zones or regional resources, but they integrate with them.

Category	Service	Public / Private Notes
Identity	IAM	Global; manages users/roles across all regions
Identity	AWS Organizations	Global; account management across regions
Networking	Route 53	Public DNS service; global routing
Networking	CloudFront	Public CDN; caches content globally
Networking	Global Accelerator	Public static IPs; routes to regional endpoints
Security	AWS WAF (CloudFront or ALB)	Global rules for web apps
Security	AWS Shield Advanced	Global DDoS protection
Monitoring	CloudTrail (multi-region)	Logs can be centralized globally
Application	SNS (can be global topic)	Public APIs by default
Application	Cognito	User pools are global, app integration is region-specific

Hybrid / Special Cases

Some services can be both regional and global depending on usage:

Service	Notes
S3	Bucket is regional; objects can be accessed globally if public
Lambda	Functions live in a region; API Gateway endpoint can be global
API Gateway	Regional endpoints (default) or edge-optimized (global via CloudFront)
DynamoDB	Tables are regional; Global Tables replicate across regions

Why this Matters

1. Architecture Decisions: Regional for isolated workloads; global for identity, DNS, CDN.

2. Disaster Recovery: Regional = replicate manually; Global = automatically accessible.

3. Security: Regional services can be private in VPC; global services often require IAM policies for access control.

4. Latency & Performance: Use global services (CloudFront, Global Accelerator) to reduce latency worldwide.