Amazon Web Services (AWS) is one of the leading global public cloud providers. To support its extensive range of cloud services used by customers worldwide, AWS has built a vast and complex global infrastructure. This infrastructure is designed to provide high availability, low latency, compliance with regional data laws, and scalability. Understanding the components of this infrastructure is crucial for architects, developers, and businesses deploying solutions on AWS.
The global infrastructure is composed of several fundamental elements that work together to deliver resilient and efficient cloud services. These include Availability Zones, Regions, Edge Locations, Regional Edge Caches, Local Zones, Wavelength Zones, and Outposts. Each component plays a distinct role in delivering AWS’s promise of reliability and performance.
In this section, we will begin by exploring Availability Zones and Regions, as they form the foundational units of AWS’s global cloud infrastructure. Understanding these concepts will help in designing solutions that are robust, scalable, and geographically optimized.
Availability Zones (AZs)
Availability Zones are the core building blocks of the AWS infrastructure. They represent the physical data centers where compute, storage, networking, and database resources reside. These are the places where users provision cloud resources such as virtual machines, databases, and storage volumes.
A common misunderstanding is that a single Availability Zone equals a single data center. In reality, an Availability Zone is more accurately described as a cluster of one or more data centers located near each other within a specific geographic area. These data centers in an AZ are connected by low-latency, high-bandwidth private fiber-optic links, allowing seamless communication and synchronization.
Each Availability Zone is designed to be isolated from failures in other Availability Zones. This isolation is achieved by ensuring separate power supplies, networking equipment, and physical security for each AZ. The purpose is to reduce the risk that a failure in one zone affects others. Despite this isolation, Availability Zones within the same region maintain high-speed, low-latency connections to support synchronous data replication and failover capabilities.
AWS recommends that architects design their applications to utilize multiple Availability Zones to improve fault tolerance and availability. By deploying resources in more than one AZ, organizations can ensure that if one zone experiences an outage, whether due to hardware failure, power loss, or natural disaster, —their applications and data remain accessible from another zone.
Some AWS services leverage these multi-AZ deployments automatically. For instance, the Relational Database Service (RDS) offers Multi-AZ configurations where data is synchronously replicated to a standby database in another AZ, ensuring high availability and automated failover. Similarly, other services like Elastic Load Balancing distribute traffic across instances in multiple AZs to enhance reliability.
Typically, a region contains three or more Availability Zones. This grouping allows AWS to offer customers the ability to architect applications that are highly resilient and scalable within a localized geographic footprint.
AWS Regions
Regions are geographical clusters of Availability Zones. Each Region consists of multiple Availability Zones that are physically close but sufficiently isolated to provide fault tolerance. Regions are strategically located around the world to serve customers with low latency and to meet compliance requirements for data locality and sovereignty.
Each AWS Region operates independently, with its own power, networking, and connectivity infrastructure. This independence ensures that events impacting one region, such as natural disasters or large-scale outages, do not cascade to other regions.
Choosing the appropriate region is a critical decision for businesses deploying applications on AWS. The selected region affects application latency, cost, compliance, and resilience.
Latency is a key factor when selecting a region. If a company is serving users primarily in Europe, deploying resources in a European region such as London, Frankfurt, or Ireland will result in better response times compared to deploying in distant regions like Sydney or São Paulo.
Beyond latency, regional deployments allow organizations to comply with local laws and regulations regarding data storage and processing. Some industries and governments mandate that data must remain within certain jurisdictions. AWS regions enable customers to meet these data residency requirements by providing physically separate locations for data storage.
Regions also play a role in disaster recovery and business continuity planning. Organizations that require very high availability may deploy resources across multiple regions. In the event of a region-wide failure, services can fail over to another region to minimize downtime.
Not all AWS services are available in every region. Some services are global, meaning they are managed centrally and are not tied to any specific region, such as Identity and Access Management (IAM) or CloudFront. However, most services are region-specific. It is essential to verify service availability in the target region when architecting solutions.
AWS groups its regions into geographic groupings for ease of reference. For example, the regions in the eastern United States (N. Virginia and Ohio) are collectively known as US East. Despite grouping, each region remains operationally independent.
AWS also provides isolated regions for specialized use cases, such as the AWS GovCloud, which is designed exclusively for U.S. government agencies and organizations with strict regulatory requirements. These isolated regions offer enhanced security and compliance controls.
Region and Availability Zone Naming
AWS assigns each region two names: a human-friendly name and a code name used in programmatic access, such as through the AWS Command Line Interface (CLI). For example, the Europe (Ireland) region is displayed as “EU (Ireland)” in the console but referenced as “eu-west-1” in API calls.
Availability Zones are identified by the region code followed by a letter, such as “eu-west-1a,” “eu-west-1b,” and “eu-west-1c.” However, the letter assignments are unique per AWS account. This means that the same AZ letter in two different accounts may correspond to different physical data centers, which helps AWS balance resource allocation and prevent hotspots.
AWS Global Infrastructure: Local Zones
What Are AWS Local Zones?
AWS Local Zones are an extension of AWS Regions, designed to bring core cloud services such as compute, storage, database, and networking closer to major metropolitan areas where no full AWS Region is available nearby. These zones help reduce latency for applications that require single-digit millisecond response times.
Local Zones allow customers to deploy latency-sensitive applications closer to end users. They are ideal for use cases such as video streaming, real-time gaming, online betting, media production, and healthcare imaging. Each Local Zone is connected to a parent AWS Region using a high-bandwidth, dedicated, low-latency network link.
Why Local Zones Matter
Local Zones allow developers to place parts of their applications near end users while continuing to use the parent region for other components. For example, a media company may use a Local Zone in Los Angeles to process video in real time but still use the Oregon region for data archiving and analytics.
In this setup, the latency-sensitive parts of the workload remain local to the users, while the rest benefit from the scalability and full range of AWS services in the parent region.
Enabling Local Zones
To use Local Zones, they must be explicitly enabled in the AWS Management Console. Once enabled, they appear alongside other Availability Zones within the chosen region and can be used to deploy resources such as EC2 instances, EBS volumes, ECS and EKS clusters, and more.
Geographic Expansion and Availability
AWS Local Zones are expanding rapidly. As of August 2023, there are 33 operational Local Zones, and 19 additional zones are planned. This rapid expansion reflects the demand for ultra-low latency capabilities in urban centers across the globe.
Use Cases for Local Zones
Local Zones are suited for:
- Low-latency gaming servers
- High-performance content creation and rendering
- Real-time video analytics
- Augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR) applications
- Financial applications with latency-critical calculations
- Healthcare imaging and diagnostics
Dedicated Local Zones
In 2023, AWS introduced Dedicated Local Zones. Unlike standard Local Zones that are shared across multiple AWS customers, Dedicated Local Zones are exclusive to a single organization or a specific community, such as a government or regulatory group. These zones are fully managed by AWS but deployed in a location dictated by the customer. They are designed to meet strict governance, security, and compliance needs.
Dedicated Local Zones are beneficial in scenarios where data residency, national security, or industry-specific regulations require localized infrastructure with limited access.
AWS Global Infrastructure: Wavelength Zones
AWS Wavelength Zones are specialized infrastructure zones embedded directly within telecommunications providers’ 5G networks. The goal of Wavelength is to extend AWS services to the edge of the mobile network, thereby enabling ultra-low latency applications such as real-time video streaming, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, and edge AI.
Wavelength Zones offer developers the ability to deploy AWS compute and storage services closer to end users who connect over mobile networks.
How Wavelength Works
Unlike traditional cloud access, where data travels over the public internet to reach a cloud region, AWS Wavelength places compute resources inside the telecom network itself. By doing so, the traffic remains within the operator’s network, eliminating the latency caused by routing over the open internet.
Developers deploy services such as EC2, EBS, ECS, and EKS within Wavelength Zones. These zones are extensions of AWS regions and are accessed just like any other Availability Zone through the AWS Management Console, CLI, or SDK.
Wavelength Zones are connected to the parent AWS Region through high-speed, secure links, allowing seamless access to other services like databases, analytics tools, and machine learning models.
Current Global Availability
As of 2023, Wavelength Zones are available through several telecom providers:
- Verizon in the United States
- KDDI in Japan
- SK Telecom in South Korea
- Vodafone in the United Kingdom and Germany
- Bell in Canada
The number of partners and zones is expected to grow as AWS expands its edge computing infrastructure.
Use Cases for Wavelength Zones
Wavelength Zones are especially useful in applications where latency must be measured in single-digit milliseconds. Key use cases include:
Real-Time Streaming and Media
Live video broadcasting and real-time content delivery benefit from faster response times and better user experiences when media processing occurs close to the viewer.
Interactive Gaming
Gaming requires consistent and low-latency connections to avoid lag. By running game servers in Wavelength Zones, developers can ensure players connect to nearby edge servers for optimal performance.
Augmented and Virtual Reality
AR/VR applications require high-speed data transfer and minimal delay between the device and the server. Wavelength supports rendering and streaming immersive environments close to users’ devices.
Autonomous Vehicles and Smart Transportation
Vehicles and traffic systems generate large volumes of data and require fast decision-making. Wavelength allows local processing of this data near mobile towers, enabling real-time responses.
Healthcare Applications
Remote surgeries, diagnostics, and mobile health services demand low latency to maintain reliability and safety. Deploying applications in Wavelength Zones brings processing power to the edge, ensuring real-time medical analysis and monitoring.
Integration with Telecom Networks
Wavelength Zones operate in close cooperation with mobile network providers. AWS handles the cloud resource management, while the telecom provider manages the network infrastructure. This joint architecture provides a powerful solution for developers who need to build high-performance applications on mobile networks.
Wavelength Zones also support network slicing and quality of service (QoS) features, which allow fine-grained control over bandwidth and latency, giving developers even more options for optimizing the user experience.
AWS Global Infrastructure: Outposts
What Is AWS Outposts?
AWS Outposts is a fully managed service that brings native AWS infrastructure, services, and operating models to virtually any on-premises or edge location. With Outposts, customers can run AWS compute, storage, database, and other services locally on physical hardware that is installed in their own data centers or co-location facilities, while still connecting to the broader AWS global infrastructure for management and integration.
Outposts is ideal for workloads that require low-latency access to on-premises systems, local data processing, or applications that need to remain on-premises due to data residency, regulatory, or compliance requirements.
How AWS Outposts Works
AWS Outposts brings the power, flexibility, and scalability of the AWS Cloud directly to your premises. It is essentially an extension of a specific AWS Region into a customer’s physical environment, allowing you to run AWS services locally on AWS-managed infrastructure. This model is particularly valuable for applications that require local data processing, low latency access, or adherence to strict data residency requirements. Outposts offers a hybrid cloud approach with a consistent experience. Developers can use the same APIs, tools, and workflows they use in AWS Regions. The major distinction is the physical location of the infrastructure—it resides on-site in your own data center or co-location space, but it’s still fully managed by AWS.
Outposts Hardware and Installation
Outposts infrastructure consists of AWS-designed hardware that includes compute and storage components, purpose-built to deliver consistent performance with the AWS Cloud. This includes server racks, networking equipment, and security systems that are compliant with AWS data center standards. The primary Outposts configuration is a 42U full rack that includes integrated power, networking, cooling systems, and redundant hardware to ensure fault tolerance and availability. Depending on customer needs, AWS also offers smaller 1U and 2U form-factor servers, suitable for retail sites, branch offices, or edge locations. These hardware options support a wide variety of instance types and storage classes, including EC2 instance types such as C-class (compute optimized), M-class (general purpose), R-class (memory optimized), and G-class (GPU accelerated), along with EBS volumes for block storage requirements and high-speed NVMe SSDs embedded in the Outposts servers.
Before installation, AWS works closely with the customer to assess and prepare the deployment site. This includes verifying physical security controls, power and cooling capacity, network connectivity, and rack space. After assessment, AWS ships the hardware directly to the customer site. AWS engineers or certified technicians handle physical installation and configuration. Once installed, the Outpost undergoes secure activation and links back to its designated parent AWS Region. From that point onward, AWS takes full responsibility for managing the hardware, including firmware updates, patching, monitoring, and maintenance.
Integration with the AWS Cloud
Once operational, the Outpost appears in the AWS Management Console as a new Availability Zone within its associated Region. Customers can launch resources on the Outpost in the same way they would in the AWS Cloud. For example, Amazon EC2 instances can be launched on Outposts subnets, Amazon EBS volumes can be attached to EC2 instances running on the Outpost, Amazon ECS and EKS clusters can span across both the Outpost and regional AWS infrastructure, and Amazon RDS can host relational databases locally on Outposts, with full support for backup and failover to the cloud. Customers interact with Outposts using the same AWS tools, including the AWS CLI, SDKs for programming languages, and Infrastructure-as-Code tools like AWS CloudFormation and Terraform. This consistent experience significantly reduces the learning curve and enables IT teams to standardize operations across both cloud and on-premises environments.
Each Outpost is integrated with the customer’s existing on-premises network. It can connect to local area networks for internal traffic, wide area networks to connect to other offices, and AWS Regions through AWS Direct Connect or a VPN over the internet. By default, all management and control-plane traffic is routed through a secure connection to the AWS Region. Data-plane traffic can be kept local or routed to AWS, depending on the use case. Outposts supports Amazon VPC networking, allowing customers to create and manage subnets on Outposts just as they would in an AWS Region. These subnets are logically part of the VPC, enabling seamless communication between workloads in AWS Regions and those on Outposts.
Outposts leverages the full AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) model, including IAM roles and policies, AWS Organizations for central account management, and resource-based policies for services like S3 on Outposts. Security groups, network ACLs, and routing tables function the same way on Outposts as they do in any AWS Region. All data on Outposts is encrypted at rest using AWS Key Management Service (KMS). Customers can manage their keys or use AWS-managed keys. Data in transit between the Outpost and the AWS Region is encrypted using TLS. AWS also supports VPC Endpoints via PrivateLink, allowing secure, private access to services in AWS Regions without sending traffic over the public internet.
Supported AWS Services on Outposts
AWS continues to expand the number of services that run natively on Outposts. As of now, supported services include compute services like Amazon EC2, including Auto Scaling Groups and Elastic Load Balancing; container services like Amazon ECS and Amazon EKS; storage services such as Amazon EBS and S3 on Outposts; and database services like Amazon RDS and analytics with Amazon EMR. These services allow organizations to develop and run applications entirely within their local environments while still benefiting from cloud-native features and integrations.
Use Cases and Real-World Applications
Outposts supports many mission-critical use cases across industries. In financial services, banks and trading firms operate under strict data residency requirements. Outposts enables them to run applications such as fraud detection, real-time trading platforms, and high-frequency transaction systems locally while still leveraging cloud-based analytics tools. In healthcare and life sciences, hospitals and research institutions use Outposts to host sensitive patient data, diagnostics applications, and clinical systems that cannot be moved to the public cloud. Imaging and genetic sequencing applications can process large datasets locally, while backups and analysis run in the cloud. In media and entertainment, Outposts allows video editors and production teams to run rendering applications and content management systems on-site, ensuring real-time editing and minimal latency in collaborative workflows. In manufacturing and industrial IoT, Outposts is used in smart factories for predictive maintenance, quality inspection, and robotics. Data collected from edge devices is processed locally for rapid decision-making and only sent to the cloud when necessary. For government and defense sectors, with support for private deployments including GovCloud integration, Outposts is ideal for agencies and contractors that require strict control over data and infrastructure.
Operational Maintenance and Monitoring
Outposts integrates with AWS CloudWatch, CloudTrail, and Config, allowing you to monitor usage, performance, and security events in real time. Alarms and logs work the same way as they do in a standard AWS Region. Admins can also access AWS Systems Manager for inventory management, patch automation, and secure remote administration of EC2 instances running on Outposts. AWS handles all hardware-related updates, including firmware patches, hardware diagnostics, replacement of failed components, and capacity upgrades. AWS provides 24/7 support for Outposts infrastructure under the same Enterprise or Business Support plans available for cloud services. In case of hardware failure, AWS coordinates on-site service to replace or repair components, minimizing downtime.
Scalability and Expansion
Outposts supports flexible scaling options. Customers can request additional racks or servers as demand increases. You can also use burst capacity in the cloud while keeping mission-critical operations local. To support high availability, customers can deploy redundant Outposts in separate locations within the same data center or across multiple data centers. Using Availability Zones on Outposts, developers can distribute workloads across different physical devices to ensure resilience.
AWS Outposts extends the full functionality of the AWS Cloud into your data center or remote location. By bringing compute, storage, and services on-premises, Outposts enables organizations to deliver low-latency applications, meet compliance requirements, and modernize legacy infrastructure without giving up the tools and benefits of cloud computing. It delivers a consistent and unified development and operations experience, regardless of where workloads run. For organizations that need to stay close to their data, edge environments, or users—without sacrificing the advantages of AWS—Outposts offers a powerful and reliable hybrid solution.
Outposts Form Factors
Outposts come in two primary hardware configurations:
42U Full Rack
This is the most common configuration and is ideal for customers who want a turnkey solution. It includes AWS-designed and pre-configured hardware installed in a full 42U rack, complete with redundant power and networking.
This configuration can be scaled from a single rack to multiple racks depending on the compute and storage needs of the customer. It supports a wide range of instance types and storage volumes, allowing organizations to deploy applications with the same flexibility and scalability as in the cloud.
1U and 2U Servers
These smaller form factors are designed for edge locations or smaller environments where space is limited. They provide the same AWS experience in a compact design and are ideal for retail stores, healthcare facilities, manufacturing sites, and other remote locations.
These servers are rack-mountable and can be deployed in standard server racks within an existing data center or facility. They provide access to a subset of AWS services, focusing on compute and storage.
Connectivity and Integration
Outposts must be connected to an AWS Region, which is referred to as the parent region. This connectivity can be achieved through AWS Direct Connect or a VPN over the public internet. The link enables AWS to manage and monitor the Outpost, deliver updates and patches, and allow users to integrate on-premises resources with regional AWS services.
Customers can also establish private network connectivity using services such as AWS PrivateLink, which allows secure access to regional services without traversing the public internet. This setup enhances security and simplifies hybrid application design.
Use Cases for AWS Outposts
Outposts enables a wide range of use cases that require local processing or must remain on-premises due to technical or regulatory constraints.
Low Latency Applications
Applications such as video processing, manufacturing control systems, and real-time analytics benefit from Outposts by processing data locally and reducing latency to just a few milliseconds.
Data Residency and Sovereignty
Organizations in regulated industries, such as finance, healthcare, and government, often face legal or compliance requirements that mandate data must remain within national or local boundaries. Outposts enables these workloads to remain compliant while still leveraging cloud capabilities.
Modernization of On-Premises Infrastructure
Outposts is ideal for companies looking to modernize legacy applications and infrastructure. It allows these organizations to adopt cloud-native practices without migrating their applications to the cloud entirely. They can use services like ECS and EKS locally, leveraging containerization and DevOps workflows on-premises.
Edge and Remote Locations
Industries such as oil and gas, mining, shipping, and telecommunications often operate in environments with limited connectivity or isolated conditions. Outposts provides a consistent AWS environment in these locations, enabling automation, data collection, and decision-making close to where the data is generated.
Maintenance and Operations
One of the key benefits of AWS Outposts is that AWS is responsible for maintaining and managing the hardware. AWS handles patching, updates, hardware monitoring, and replacements, allowing IT teams to focus on deploying and running applications rather than maintaining infrastructure.
This managed model ensures consistency in security, availability, and performance. If hardware fails or needs to be replaced, AWS coordinates the logistics and technicians to address the issue.
Summary of AWS Global Infrastructure
Global Scale and Reach
AWS Global Infrastructure is designed to support a wide range of workloads with high availability, scalability, and low latency. It offers a combination of core and edge services deployed around the world, enabling customers to build resilient, responsive, and globally distributed applications.
The infrastructure is organized into key components:
- Availability Zones are the physical data centers grouped in Regions that host core services.
- Regions are clusters of AZs in different geographic locations that provide local access to AWS services and enable data residency.
- Edge Locations are used primarily for content delivery and caching, improving user experience by serving content closer to users.
- Regional Edge Caches provide an additional caching layer to extend the performance benefits of Edge Locations.
- Local Zones bring compute and storage services to major cities, reducing latency where no AWS Region is nearby.
- Wavelength Zones extend AWS infrastructure into 5G networks, supporting ultra-low latency mobile applications.
- Outposts bring AWS services directly into customer data centers for hybrid cloud scenarios and regulatory compliance.
Designing for High Availability
The architecture of the AWS Global Infrastructure allows customers to build applications that are resilient to failures at various levels. By using multiple AZs, workloads can withstand localized failures. For even higher levels of disaster recovery, customers can architect across multiple Regions.
Latency-sensitive and edge workloads benefit from Edge Locations, Local Zones, and Wavelength Zones. These enable developers to bring data processing closer to users or devices without sacrificing integration with AWS services.
Customers can use Outposts for hybrid and edge computing needs while maintaining a consistent operational model with the rest of their AWS environment.
Compliance and Security
Security and compliance are built into every layer of the AWS infrastructure. Regions and Availability Zones are designed with physical security, environmental controls, and redundant power and networking. AWS complies with a broad range of international standards and certifications, helping customers meet their industry-specific regulatory requirements.
With offerings like GovCloud and Dedicated Local Zones, AWS also serves highly specialized industries and government entities that demand strict control over data and operations.
Final Thoughts
AWS Global Infrastructure is a comprehensive, highly distributed, and reliable platform built to meet the diverse needs of modern enterprises. Whether an organization is building a low-latency gaming platform, a compliant healthcare solution, or a hybrid cloud system for manufacturing, AWS provides the tools and infrastructure necessary to deliver performance, scalability, and resilience at global scale.
By understanding how the components of the AWS infrastructure work and how to use them effectively, architects and developers can design systems that are more robust, secure, and responsive to user needs wherever those users are in the world.