The modern IT service delivery model for cloud computing has been baselined by Amazon Web Services (AWS) where the success of Amazon’s cloud service delivery depends on the end-users access to the availability of resources within the scope of technology.
From the beginning, AWS Cloud has expanded its global network of infrastructure, offering customers a wide range of growing services across multiple regions and locations. The extensive global cloud infrastructure footprint paved the way for distinguishing factors as compared to its tier-one competitors like Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud. It provides the flexibility of choosing how and where you want to run your workloads, and when you do, you can use the same network, control plane, APIs, and AWS services.
AWS Global Infrastructure is the foundation of a network of global data centers and platforms that Amazon utilizes to deliver AWS services and application workloads. For service delivery, end users and enterprise environments can be connected to the AWS global infra components comprising of:
- AWS Regions
- AWS Edge Locations
- AWS Availability Zones
- AWS Local Zones
- AWS Wavelength Zones
- AWS Outposts
AWS Regions
AWS Region is an actual geographical location anywhere around the world, from where data centers are grouped for application and service delivery by Amazon. Each collection of logical data centers is referred to as an availability zone. Each AWS Region is made up of a minimum of three geographically isolated and physically different Azs and this AZ is connected to the others using redundant, ultra-low-latency networks and has independent power, cooling, and physical security. High availability AWS clients can build their applications to run across many AZs for even greater fault tolerance. The highest standards for data protection, compliance, and security are met by AWS infrastructure Regions.
AWS Edge Locations
Edge Locations are used for static content delivery where static content is replicated to locations to deliver services with reduced possible latency. Edge locations are AWS data centers that serve requests for CloudFront and Route 53. CloudFront is a content delivery network, while Route 53 is a DNS service. Requests going to either one of these services will be routed to the edge location nearest to users automatically, for faster response time. There are other edge location services that help in routing traffic onto the AWS network which is usually faster and more reliable than the public internet, especially for long distances.
AWS Availability Zones
One or more distinct data centers with redundant power, networking, and connectivity make up an Availability Zone (AZ) in an AWS Region. Customers are allowed to run production databases and applications that are more fault-tolerant, highly available, and scalable from AZs than from a single data center. All of the AZs within an AWS Region are connected via fully redundant, dedicated metro fibre enabling high-throughput, low-latency networking between the AZs. Between AZs, all communication is encrypted. Synchronous replication between AZs can be accomplished with the current network performance. Applications may be easily partitioned for high availability thanks to AZs. Businesses are better insulated and shielded from problems like power outages, lightning strikes, tornadoes, earthquakes, and any calamity if an application is partitioned between AZs.
AWS Local Zones
The compute, storage, database, and other AWS services in AWS Local Zones are an extension of AWS Regions that are positioned closer to end users to provision and run high-speed applications (Ex: Machine Learning services and applications) with millisecond latencies in specific AWS Local Zones.
In other words, you can use AWS services like Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud, Amazon Virtual Private Cloud, Amazon Elastic Block Store, Amazon File Storage, and Amazon Elastic Load Balancing to run your latency-sensitive applications close to end users at each AWS Local Zone location, which is an extension of an AWS Region.
AWS Wavelength Zones
Within AWS Regions, wavelength zones provide connections for 5G communication. Wavelength zones are AWS capabilities for computing and storing data within the data centers of communication service providers (CSPs), which are located near the edge of their 5G networks. Wavelength Zone-based applications can be accessed by 5G devices without ever leaving the 5G network, allowing them to benefit from 5G bandwidth and latency to the maximum.
AWS Outposts
A fully managed service called AWS Outposts lets customers build and deploy AWS storage capacity at their locations. A hybrid delivery experience is made possible by outposts, which extend AWS infrastructure, services, tools, and APIs to customer locations. Almost any customer-provided space can be used to set up an AWS Outpost, including:
- Data centers
- Co-location facilities &
- Customer on-premise facilities
Benefits of AWS Global Infrastructure
Security
AWS infrastructure is continuously monitored to help guarantee data confidentiality, integrity, and availability. Before leaving our secured facilities, the AWS global network that connects our data centers and regions automatically encrypts all data at the physical layer.
Availability
AWS delivers the highest network availability of any cloud provider. Each region is fully isolated and comprised of multiple AZs, which are fully isolated and partitioned within the infrastructure.
Performance
AWS Regions offer low latency, low packet loss, and high overall network quality. Resources can quickly be spined up as per application requirements, deploying hundreds or even thousands of servers in minutes.
Scalability
With AWS organizations enterprises will be able to provision the number of resources that they need, knowing they can instantly scale up or down as per the fluctuating demand of their business, which allows cost reduction and improves the customer’s ability to meet their user’s demands at all times.
Flexibility
The AWS Global Infrastructure gives you the flexibility of choosing how and where you want to run your workloads, and when you do so, you are using the same network, control plane, APIs, and AWS services.
Global Footprint
AWS’s global infrastructure footprint is the largest of any provider, and it is constantly expanding at a significant rate. The customers have the flexibility to select a technology infrastructure that is closest to their primary user target when deploying their applications and workloads to the cloud. Workloads with the highest throughput and lowest latency can be run on the cloud that is best suited and most supportive to a large number of applications.
Conclusion
AWS Global Cloud Infrastructure is the most secure, scalable and reliable cloud platform. From deploying application workloads around the world with one click to building and deploying specific applications closer to end users with single-digit millisecond latency, AWS has the largest and most dynamic ecosystem serving its customers worldwide. Moving forward, AWS is consciously contributing towards offering a future-fit IT strategy with a primary focus on product portfolios, service uptime, compliance and availability. It is also working towards a greener environment to attain carbon neutrality by investing in renewable energy and data center projects as part of its sustainability initiative.