Help Center> Auto Scaling> User Guide (ME-Abu Dhabi Region)> Service Overview> Regions and AZs
Updated on 2022-02-22 GMT+08:00
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Regions and AZs

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

How to Select a Region?

You are advised to select a region close to you or your target users. This reduces network latency and improves access rate.

How to Select an AZ?

When determining whether to deploy resources in the same AZ, consider your applications' 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.

Parent topic: Service Overview