Updated on 2023-10-27 GMT+08:00

Region and AZ

Concepts

A region or an availability zone (AZ) identifies the location of a data center. You can create resources in a specific region or an AZ.

  • Regions are divided from the dimensions of geographical location and network latency. Public services, such as Elastic Cloud Server (ECS), Elastic Volume Service (EVS), Object Storage Service (OBS), Virtual Private Cloud (VPC), Elastic IP (EIP), and Image Management Service (IMS), are shared within the same region. Regions are classified as universal regions and dedicated regions. A universal region provides universal cloud services for common tenants. A dedicated region provides services of the same type only or for specific tenants.
  • An AZ contains one or multiple physical data centers. Each AZ has independent cooling, fire extinguishing, moisture-proof, and electricity facilities. Within an AZ, computing, network, storage, and other resources are logically divided into multiple clusters. AZs within a region are interconnected using high-speed optical fibers to allow you to build cross-AZ high-availability systems.

Figure 1 shows the relationship between regions and AZs.

Figure 1 Regions and AZs

HUAWEI CLOUD provides services in many regions around the world. You can select a region and AZ as needed. For more information, see Huawei Cloud Global Regions.

How Do I Select a Region?

When selecting a region, consider the following factors:

  • Location

    You are advised to select a region close to you or your target users. This reduces the network latency and improves the access speed. Regions within the Chinese mainland provide the same infrastructure, BGP network quality, as well as resource operations and configurations. Therefore, if your target users are in the Chinese mainland, you do not need to consider the network latency differences when selecting a region.

    • If you or your target users are in the Asia Pacific area outside the Chinese mainland, select the CN-Hong Kong, AP-Bangkok, or AP-Singapore region.
    • If you or your target users are in Africa, select the AF-Johannesburg region.
    • If you or your target users are in Europe, select the EU-Paris region.
  • Resource price

    Resource prices may vary in different regions. For details, see Product Pricing Details.

How Do I Select an AZ?

When determining whether to deploy resources in the same AZ, consider your application's requirements on disaster recovery (DR) and network latency.

  • For high DR capability, deploy resources in different AZs in the same region.
  • For low network latency, deploy resources in the same AZ.

Regions and Endpoints

Before using an API to call resources, specify its region and endpoint. For more details, see Regions and Endpoints.