Regions and AZs

Concepts

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

• A region is a physical data center location. Each region is completely isolated to ensure high fault tolerance and stability. After creating resources in a region, you cannot change the region.
• An AZ is a physical location with independent power supplies and network in a region. A region contains one or more AZs that are physically isolated but interconnected through high-speed internal connections. Faults that occur in one AZ will not affect other AZs. The inter-AZ connections are low-latency and unexpensive.

Selecting a Region

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

How Do I Select an AZ?

Consider your requirements for DR and network latency when selecting an AZ:

• Deploy resources in different AZs in the same region to improve DR.
• For an application that requires an extremely low latency, deploy all its resources in the same AZ.

Regions and Endpoints

When you use resources with API calls, you must specify the regional endpoint. Obtain the regions and endpoints from the enterprise administrator.