Regions vs. Availability Zones

Difficulty: Beginner

Question

What is the difference between an AWS Region and an Availability Zone (AZ)?

Answer

- **Region**: A physical location in the world where AWS has multiple data centers. Regions are geographically isolated. - **Availability Zone (AZ)**: One or more discrete data centers within a Region. Each AZ has redundant power and networking.

**Best Practice**: Deploy applications across at least two AZs within a single Region to achieve high availability.

Concepts covered

Region, Availability Zone, Latency, High Availability, DR