The Amazon Web Services (AWS) global infrastructure is a critical concept that any student studying for the AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate (SAA-C03) exam must comprehend. It includes concepts such as Availability Zones, AWS Regions, and Amazon Route 53. This article will delve deeper into these concepts, to help you grasp their function and relevance in AWS.
AWS Global Infrastructure
AWS’s global infrastructure is composed of a few core components:
- AWS Regions
- Availability Zones
- Edge Locations
- Regional Edge Caches
Let’s dissect these one by one.
AWS Regions
An AWS region is a discrete and independent geographic area that constitutes the foundation of AWS’s global infrastructure. Each region consists of several availability zones (AZs).
The distribution of regions worldwide ensures that your data remains in the specific region where you desire, enabling you to meet data residency requirements with relative ease. It also allows you to host applications and data in multiple regions, ensuring high availability and disaster recovery.
As of this writing, there are 24 AWS regions around the globe.
Availability Zones
Availability Zones are physically separate locations within an AWS Region that are engineered to be isolated from failures in other Availability Zones to provide inexpensive, low-latency network connectivity to other zones in the same region.
Availability Zones consist of one to many discrete data centers, each with redundant power, networking, and cooling. They are housed in separate facilities to offer a high availability of service that is dependable and resistant to failures.
By utilizing multiple Availability Zones, you reduce the likelihood of service interruptions due to factors like power outages, system failures, or natural disasters.
Edge Locations
Edge Locations facilitate CloudFront (AWS Content Delivery Network) and Lambda@Edge services. They effectively serve as data caches, holding content such as web pages and video content closer to your end-users to minimize latency. As of now, hundreds of Edge Locations scattered across the globe.
Regional Edge Caches
Regional Edge Caches assist the performance of CloudFront by storing recently used content closer to your viewers, even if it is not frequently accessed. They operate in each AWS region and enhance the performance of both cache hits and cache misses (content that is not already cached).
Amazon Route 53
Amazon Route 53 is a highly flexible and scalable DNS (Domain Name System) web service. It provides three main functions: domain registration, DNS routing, and health checks on resources in your environment.
Route 53 has been developed to provide businesses and developers with a reliable and cost-effective means of directing end users to applications by translating domain names into the numeric IP addresses.
Route 53 also ensures failover where necessary, meaning that when your primary application is down, traffic is routed to alternate locations where your application is functioning properly.
Understanding the AWS Global Infrastructure is Crucial
Grasping the concept and utilization of AWS Global Infrastructure, Availability Zones, AWS Regions, and Amazon Route 53 is essential in preparing for the AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate (SAA-C03) exam. Each of these components plays a fundamental role in creating robust, flexible, and highly resilient systems on the AWS platform. They allow a wide variety of strategies for dealing with system failures, reducing latency, improving response times, and ensuring data safety and availability.
By exploring and practicing with these aspects, you will develop a solid foundation and increase your chances of doing well on the Solutions Architect – Associate exam.
Practice Test
True or False: AWS global infrastructure consists of regions, availability zones, and edge locations.
- True
- False
Answer: True
Explanation: The primary components of AWS infrastructure include AWS Regions, Availability Zones (AZs), and edge locations.
An AWS region is a collection of:
- A. Edge Locations
- B. Data Centers
- C. Availability Zones
- D. Both A and B
Answer: C. Availability Zones
Explanation: An AWS region is a geographical area divided into multiple isolated locations known as availability zones.
Amazon Route 53 is a(n):
- A. Object Storage Service
- B. Content Delivery Network
- C. Domain Name System Web Service
- D. Serverless Computing Platform
Answer: C. Domain Name System Web Service
Explanation: Amazon Route 53 is a scalable Domain Name System (DNS) web service designed to give developers and businesses a highly reliable and cost-effective way to route end users to Internet applications.
True or False: You can manually choose the specific availability zone your resources are in.
- True
- False
Answer: True
Explanation: When launching an instance, one can manually select the Availability Zone (AZ) or allow AWS to select it automatically.
How many availability zones at least, AWS Regions do have?
- A. One
- B. Two
- C. Three
- D. Four
Answer: B. Two
Explanation: Each AWS Region contains at least two Availability Zones.
Multiple Select: What services are region-specific?
- A. Amazon EC2
- B. Amazon RDS
- C. IAM
- D. S3
Answer: A. Amazon EC2, B. Amazon RDS, D. S3
Explanation: Amazon EC2, RDS, and S3 are regional services. IAM is a global service and not restricted to a specific region.
Which AWS service is designed for use with online web applications to speed up user access to web content?
- A. Amazon S3
- B. Amazon Route 53
- C. Amazon CloudFront
- D. AWS Lambda
Answer: C. Amazon CloudFront
Explanation: Amazon CloudFront is a fast content delivery network (CDN) service that securely delivers data, videos, applications, and APIs to users globally.
Which of the following is incorrect?
- A. Availability Zones are isolated locations within an AWS Region.
- B. AWS Regions consist of multiple, isolated, and physically separate Availability Zones.
- C. Amazon S3 is a global service.
- D. AWS Edge Locations are individual data centers.
Answer: C. Amazon S3 is a global service.
Explanation: Amazon S3 is a regional service, not a global one.
True or False: Amazon Route 53 does not support Domain Name System (DNS) failover.
- True
- False
Answer: False
Explanation: Amazon Route 53 is a highly available and scalable Domain Name System (DNS) web service that effectively provides DNS and DNS failover capabilities.
How many edge locations does AWS have currently?
- A. 50+
- B. 100+
- C. 150+
- D. 200+
Answer: D. 200+
Explanation: AWS now has over 200 points of presence (PoPs), and the number continues to grow. These comprise edge locations and regional edge caches.
Interview Questions
What is an AWS Region?
An AWS Region is a physical location around the world where there are multiple Availability Zones. Regions are completely separate geographic areas to ensure the most robust, fault-tolerant infrastructure possible.
What is an AWS Availability Zone?
An Availability Zone (AZ) is a distinct location within an AWS Region. Each Region consists of multiple, isolated, and physically separate AZ’s within a geographic area.
How does Amazon Route 53 work?
Amazon Route 53 is a scalable Domain Name System (DNS) web service designed to route end users to internet applications by translating human-readable names like www.example.com into the numeric IP addresses like 192.0.2.1 that computers use to connect to each other.
What is the purpose of AWS edge locations?
Edge locations serve requests for CloudFront and Route 53. Content is cached at these locations to provide low latency delivery.
How many Availability Zones should be utilized for a highly available application?
At least two Availability Zones should be utilized to ensure a highly available application. This is to ensure that if any one Availability Zone experiences an issue, the other Availability Zone can support the load.
How many AWS Regions are there worldwide?
As of 2021, there are 25 geographic AWS Regions.
How many AWS Availability Zones are there globally?
As of 2021, AWS spans 80 Availability Zones within 25 geographic Regions around the world.
What do the AWS regions US-EAST-1 and US-WEST-2 signify?
US-EAST-1 and US-WEST-2 signify the geographic locations of AWS data centers. US-EAST-1 corresponds to Northern Virginia, and US-WEST-2 corresponds to Oregon.
Can resources in one region access resources in another directly?
No. Resources in different regions are completely isolated and can’t communicate with each other unless explicitly enabled through a mechanism like VPC peering or Transit Gateway.
Can you move an Amazon EC2 instance from one region to another?
An EC2 instance itself cannot be moved from one region to another. However, you can create an AMI (Amazon Machine Image) from your existing instance and then launch the instance in your desired region using the created AMI.
What is the significance of a Resource Record Set in Amazon Route 53?
A resource record set is a collection of DNS records with the same name and type. They are used by Amazon Route 53 to determine how to respond to DNS queries.
Can you copy an Amazon RDS snapshot to another region?
Yes, you can manually copy an Amazon RDS snapshot to another region. This feature is useful for disaster recovery, migration, or other scenarios in which data must be geographically dispersed.
How many AWS Edge Locations are there worldwide?
As of 2021, AWS has more than 225 Points of Presence (PoPs), and the AWS network has 107 edge sites across 37 countries.
What is the benefit of AWS local zones?
AWS Local Zones are a type of infrastructure deployment that places AWS compute, storage, database, and other select services closer to large population, industry, and IT centres. They support applications with low latency requirements.
Can an existing Amazon S3 bucket’s region be changed?
No, once an Amazon S3 bucket has been created, the bucket’s region cannot be changed. However, you could create a new bucket in the desired region and then copy objects from the existing bucket to the new one.
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