AWS Global Infrastructure Flashcards
A look into the networks
AWS Global Infrastructure
Globally distributed hardware and datacenters that are physically networked. Made up of 32 Launched Regions, 102 Availability Zones, 115 Direct Connection Locations, 550+ Points of Presence, 35 Local Zones, 29 Wavelength Zones
Regions
Geographically distinct locations (consists of one or more AZs) and every region is physically isolated from and independent of every other region in terms of location, power, and water supply. Each region generally has three AZs. Some users are limited to 2 AZs. New services almost always become available first in the US-EAST-1. Not all services are available in all regions. The cost of the AWS services also vary based on the region.
4 factors to consider when choosing a Region
- What Regulatory Compliance does this region meet?
- What is the cost of AWS services in this region?
- What AWS services are available in this region?
- What is the distance or latency to my end-user?
Regional vs Global Services
Regional: AWS scopes their AWS management console on a selected Region. This determines where an AWS service will be launched and what will be seen within an AWS service’s console. You generally don’t explicitly set the Region for a service at the time of creation.
Global: Some AWS services operate across multiple regions, and so the region will be fixed to Global. For these global services at the time of creation:
- There is no concept of region
- A single region must be explicitly chosen
- A group of regions are chosen
AZs - Availability Zones
Physical locations made up of one or more datacenters. These datacenters will be isolated from each other, but they will be close enough to provide low-latency («10ms). It is a common practice to run the workloads in at least 3 AZs to ensure services remain available in case one or two datacenters fail. (High Availability) Availability Zones are represented by a Region Code, followed by a letter (ex: US-EAST-1a). A subnet is associated with an AZ, and you would never choose the AZ when launching resources but use the subnet that is associated with the AZ.
AWS AZs are all redundantly connected to multiple Tier 1 networks
Tier 1 Network
A network that can reach every other network on the internet without purchasing IP transit or paying for peering.
Fault Tolerance
The ability to prevent a failure
Fault Domain (AKA Failure Zone)
It is a section of a network that is vulnerable to damage if a critical device or system fails. The purpose of a fault domain is that if a failure occurs, it will not cascade outside that domain, limiting the damage possibility.
Fault Levels
A collection of Fault Domains. An AWS Region would be a Fault Level and an AZ would be a Fault Domain. Each Amazon Region is designed for isolation from each other, which helps achieve great fault tolerance and stability. Each AZ is isolated, but AZ in a Region are connected to each other via low-latency links. Each AZ is designed as an independent Fault Domain. Multi-AZ is for high availability AKA if there’s a failure in one AZ the other ones are working and can give services without interruption.
AWS Global Network
“Backbone of AWS”. Private expressways, where things move really fast between datacenters.
AWS Global Accelerator & AWS S3 Transfer Acceleration
They both use edge locations as an on-ramp to quickly reach AWS resources in other Regions by traversing the fast AWS Global Network.
How it ties in with PoP:
S3:
When uploading a file to S3, PoP can be used to direct the file to a nearby edge location (PoP). By uploading the file first to a PoP, the data is closer to its final destination, improving upload performance and reducing latency.
After the file is uploaded to the nearby PoP, it travels faster through the AWS network to be stored in Amazon S3.
Global Accelerator:
It utilizes PoPs as the entry points for user traffic to optimize the routing of requests and ensure low-latency, high-performance connectivity.
These PoPs play a crucial role in ensuring the efficiency of Global Accelerator by bringing traffic closer to AWS’s global network and ensuring the best performance for the user, whether it’s for accessing content stored in S3, interacting with EC2 instances, or using any other AWS service.
CDN - Amazon Cloudfront
Uses edge locations as an off-ramp to provide at the edge storage and compute near the end user.
How it ties in with PoP:
You point your website to CloudFront so that it will route requests to the nearest Edge Location cache. It allows you to choose an origin (web server or storage) that will be source of cache. It then caches the contents of the chosen origin and returns to the various edge locations around the world.
VPC Endpoints
Ensures your resources stay within the AWS Network and don’t traverse over the public Internet.
PoP - Point of Presence
Is a global network of edge locations where AWS has infrastructure to optimize delivery of services and content closer to end users.
Edge Locations
Are data centers that hold cache (copy) of the most popular files so that the delivery distance to the the end users are reduced. Shorter distance = faster delivery.
