What are AWS Region, Local Zones, Wavelength Zones, Cloud Edge Locations?
If you are new to AWS Cloud and plan to deploy an application that requires it to be available globally, this article could help you to get familiar with some of the basic concepts.
AWS Region
Every AWS region is a physical location where there are clusters of data centers. Each group of logical data centers is called Availability zones.
Each region has multiple and physically separated availability zones such as ap-southeast-1a, ap-southeast-1b, ap-southeast-1c, ap-southeast-1d, etc.
Each Availability zone has independent power, cooling, physical security, and an ultra-low latency network.
So, if you require a high-availability application, run your application on multiple availability zones for greater fault tolerance.
AWS Local Zones
AWS local zones are an extension of the AWS region. AWS local zones provide AWS services closer to the end users. AWS local zones are great for real-time Gaming applications, Electronic design automation, Machine learning and reservoir simulations. AWS local zones provide a high-bandwidth, secure connection between local workloads and those that run in the AWS Region.
AWS Wavelength Zones
If you plan to build a mobile application with single-digit millisecond latency, then consider deploying your application in Wavelength zones.
AWS Wavelength zones are great for gaming applications, live video streaming applications, Machine Learning inference, and VR/AR applications.
AWS Wavelength provides services to the edge of the 5G network, minimizing the latency to connect to an application from a mobile device. The service enhances the user experience significantly.
AWS Edge Locations
AWS edge locations are a global network of data centers that uses the nearest edge location to the end user to provide the lowest latency delivery and real-time responsiveness.
CloudFront and Lambda@Edge both use edge locations to provide ultra-low latency services to the end user. So, if your application requires ultra-low latency content delivery, consider using CloudFront at the edge or Lambda@Edge.
Learn more here.
