What Are Regions and AZs?

Concepts

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 defined in terms of geographical location and network latency. Each region has its own shared public services (ECS, EVS, OBS, VPC, EIP, and IMS). Regions are either common or dedicated. A common region provides common cloud services available to all tenants. A dedicated region provides services of a specific type or only for specific tenants.
• An AZ contains one or more physical data centers. Each AZ has independent cooling, fire extinguishing, antimoisture, and electricity facilities. The computing, network, storage, and other resources in an AZ are logically divided into multiple clusters. AZs in a region are interconnected through high-speed optic fiber, so systems deployed across AZs can achieve higher availability.

Figure 1 shows the relationship between the regions and AZs.

Figure 1 Region and AZ

HUAWEI CLOUD provides services in many regions around the world. You can select a region and AZ as needed.

Which Region Should I Choose?

When selecting a region, consider the following:

• Location

  You are advised to select a region closest to your target users. This reduces network latency and improves access rate. However, Chinese mainland regions provide the same infrastructure, BGP network quality, and operations and configurations on resources. 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 your target users are in Asia Pacific (excluding 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.

Which AZ Should I Choose?

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

• To get higher DR capability, deploy resources in different AZs in the same region.
• To lower 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.