Regions and Availability Zones

Regions are geographic locations worldwide where AWS hosts its data centers. AWS Regions are named after the location where they reside. For example, in the United States, there is a Region in Northern Virginia called the Northern Virginia Region and a Region in Oregon called the Oregon Region. There are Regions in Asia Pacific, Canada, Europe, the Middle East, and South America, and AWS continues to expand to meet the needs of its customers.

AWS Regions are independent from one another. This means that your data is not replicated from one Region to another, without your explicit consent and authorization.

Inside every Region is a cluster of Availability Zones (AZ). An AZ consists of one or more data centers with redundant power, networking, and connectivity. These data centers operate in discrete facilities with undisclosed locations. They are connected using redundant high-speed and low-latency links.

AZs also have a code name. Since they’re located inside Regions, they can be addressed by appending a letter to the end of the Region code name. For example:

• us-east-1a: an AZ in us-east-1 (Northern Virginia Region)
• sa-east-1b: an AZ in sa-east-1 (São Paulo Region in South America)