What Are Regions and AZs?

Concept

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 based on 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 into universal regions and dedicated regions. A universal region provides universal cloud services for common tenants. A dedicated region provides specific services for specific tenants.
• An AZ contains one or more 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 support 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. Select a region and AZ based on requirements. For more information, see Global Products and Services.

Selecting a Region

When selecting a region, consider the following factors:

• Location

  It is recommended that you select the closest region for low network latency and quick access. 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 on the Chinese mainland, you do not need to consider the network latency differences when selecting a region.

  • If your target users are in Asia Pacific (excluding the Chinese mainland), select the CN-Hong Kong, AP-Bangkok, or AP-Singapore region.
  • If your target users are in Africa, select the AF-Johannesburg region.
  • If your target users are in Europe, select the EU-Paris region.
  • If your target users are in Latin America, select the LA-Santiago region.
    

    The LA-Santiago region is located in Chile.

• Resource price

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

Selecting an AZ

When deploying resources, consider your applications' requirements on disaster recovery (DR) and network latency.

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

Regions and Endpoints

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