AWS Global Infrastructure

Amazon Web Services provides the most extensive global footprint compared to any other cloud providers in the market, opening up new regions faster than others. AWS maintains numerous global geographic regions, from North America, South America, Europe, Asia Pacific, and the Middle East. AWS serves a million active customers in more than 190 countries.

AWS can support this massive workload, Global Cloud Infrastructure which consists of Availability Zones, Regions, and Edge Networks. The AWS Global Cloud Infrastructure is the most secure, extensive, and reliable cloud platform in the industry today, which offers a wide range of cloud service offerings.

AWS is the top choice of small and medium enterprises for deploying their application workloads globally and distributing content closer to their end-users with low latency. It provides you with a highly available and fault-tolerant cloud infrastructure where and when you need it. AWS owns and operates thousands of servers and networking devices that are running in various data centers, scattered around the globe.

What is AWS Infrastructure?

• AWS provides us an infrastructure with data centres which are available globally all over the world.
• AWS provides us a facility of multiple availability zone also if in case one availability zone fails another availability zone carry the workload and continue our work this is the main benefit of global infrastructure of AWS.

AWS Global Infrastructure Map

• The AWS Global Infrastructure Map is a comprehensive visualization of Amazon Web Services expansive global presence. It highlights AWS data centers, including regions, availability zones, and edge locations spread across various geographic areas worldwide. This infrastructure ensures low-latency access, high availability, and fault tolerance for AWS customers, enabling them to deploy applications and services with greater reliability and performance. By distributing data and services closer to users, AWS global footprint supports scalability and resilience, ensuring that businesses can deliver seamless digital experiences across regions.
• The AWS Cloud is distributed across 108 Availability Zones in 34 regions worldwide, with future expansions planned for 18 additional Availability Zones and six new regions, including Mexico, New Zealand, Saudi Arabia, Thailand, Taiwan, and the AWS European Sovereign Cloud.

Why Do We Need AWS Cloud Infrastructure?

• AWS Global Cloud Infrastructure is a highly secure, reliable, and expansive cloud platform that offers more than 200 fully featured services from data centers worldwide.
• AWS enables users to deploy application workloads globally in a single step or place applications closer to end users with ultra-low latency, offering single-digit millisecond response times.
• With millions of active customers and a vast network of tens of thousands of global partners, AWS boasts the largest and most vibrant cloud ecosystem.
• AWS is trusted by organizations of all sizes and across nearly every industry, including start-ups, large enterprises, and public sector entities, to run a wide range of use cases.

Components Of AWS Global Infrastructure

1. Data Center

A data center is a physical facility that houses hundreds of computer systems, network devices, and storage appliances. We can run our applications in two or more data centers to achieve high availability, so if there is an outage in one of the data centers, we still have other servers running in another data center. A data center can also deliver cached content to your global end-users to improve response times. At its core, the AWS Global Infrastructure utilizes multiple data centers and group them into Availability Zones, Regions, and Edge Locations.

2. Availability Zone (AZ)

AZs are physically separated data centers with redundant power networking and connectivity. So each AZ is a logical group of data centers which can be one or more physical data centers. They can be in separate buildings or locations. They are built with redundancies. There is high throughput low latency networking between these AZs in a region. All traffic between these AZs is encrypted. Many data centers compose the AWS global infrastructure. Inside the data center, there are thousands of physical servers racks storage and firewalls. Each data center is usually built with redundant power and networking. Each AZ has multiple data centers in each region.

The main reason for having multiple data redundant data centers in an AZ(n) region is for high availability. Many AWS services have built-in high availability, where resources are replicated across multiple AZs in a region. For example, Amazon S3 operates in at least three AZs. Data is protected if one AZ goes down. AWS also gives options to customers to deploy applications in multiple AZs to ensure business continuity in events like a power outage, fires or flood.

3. Point-of-Presence or PoP

The other component of the AWS Global Cloud Infrastructure is the edge networks of Point-of-Presence or PoP. It consists of Edge Locations and Regional Edge Caches, which enables us to distribute our content with low latency to our global users.

Basically, a PoP serves as an access point that allows two different networks to communicate with each other. By using these global edge networks, a user request doesn’t need to travel far back to your origin just to fetch data. The cached contents can quickly be retrieved from regional edge caches that are closer to your end users. This is also referred to as a Content Delivery Network or CDN. So for example, we have high-resolution images stored on a server in California. We can cache these media files to an edge location in the Philippines, India, or Singapore to allow our customers in Asia to retrieve these photos faster. The images will be loaded quickly because it is fetched to an edge server near our users, instead of retrieving it from the origin server in California.

4. Region

When we use AWS console CLI or SDK to manage AWS resources the first thing we need to do is to choose a region. The resources we created in one region are only visible in that region there are a few considerations when we choose a region. First of all, we may want to choose a region that is close to our users for the lowest latency. For example, if the majority of your users are in the US we may want to choose a US region.

The second reason is compliance and regulatory requirements. Certain laws mandate that certain data must be stored in particular countries. For example, if our organization is operating highly sensitive data for the US government we should consider the GovCloud. Some resources or services are only available in certain regions new services are usually launched in the U.S. east northern Virginia region first. Sometimes it takes a long time to roll out to other regions. For example, Alexa for business is only available in this region at the moment however this doesn't mean your end user can't access the application created by the service. It just means we can only create and manage the service in this region each region may have different prices for AWS services. For example, our EC2 instances or data in S3 buckets may be charged a different price in Singapore than in the US. Keep in mind that AWS charges data transfer between regions.

5. Edge Locations

At the moment, edge locations are part of the AWS Content Delivery Network for low latency high throughput content delivery. Edge locations are all over the world close to the users. They leverage Amazon's ultra-fast global network backbone to deliver data and cache them in a location that is close to the users. Services that use edge locations are Amazon Cloudfront and Lambda Edge Cloudfront is the AWS global CDN for caching dynamic or static content lambda edges the edge computing to run code on low latency computing resources. We only pay as we go with no minimum upfront cost data transfer from AWS origins such as Amazon S3 EC2 and Elastic Load Balancing to the edge location are free. We only pay for the data transferred out of the edge location.

For example, if we are running a photo-sharing website that stores images in an S3 bucket in the US most of our end users are in Singapore, the first time users download images images are delivered from the S3 bucket in the US through the Cloudfront network and cached in the edge location in Singapore. Later on, other users in Singapore will download them from the edge location instead. Without edge locations, these contents will always have to travel from the origin to the end user. We don't need to pay for the data transfer between S3 and the edge location it's much cheaper than sending data from S3 to our users directly.

6. Regional Edge Cache

A Regional Edge Cache in AWS is a location that sits between AWS edge locations and the origin servers (such as S3 or EC2) in the CloudFront content delivery network (CDN). It helps cache larger objects that may not be frequently accessed at edge locations. When content is not available in an edge location's cache, it is retrieved from the regional edge cache, reducing the need to go back to the origin server, thereby improving content delivery efficiency and reducing latency for users.

Benefits Of AWS Infrastructure

• Availability: AWS offers the highest level of network availability among cloud providers. Each AWS region is completely isolated and consists of several Availability Zones (AZs), which are separated sections of infrastructure. By distributing applications across multiple AZs within the same region, users can isolate issues and maintain high availability. AWS's control planes and management consoles are also distributed across regions, and regional API endpoints are designed to remain functional for up to 24 hours, even if isolated from the global control plane, ensuring continuity during any disruptions.
• Security: AWS prioritizes security starting with its core infrastructure, which is specifically built for the cloud and adheres to some of the highest global security standards. This infrastructure is constantly monitored, ensuring the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of your data. All data moving across the AWS global network connecting data centers and regions is automatically encrypted at the physical layer before leaving AWS’s secure facilities. Users have complete control over their data, with the ability to encrypt, transfer, and manage data retention at any time.
• Performance: AWS infrastructure is optimized for high performance. The AWS regions are designed to offer low latency, minimal packet loss, and superior network quality, achieved through a redundant 400 GbE fiber backbone providing terabits of capacity between regions. For applications requiring ultra-low latency, AWS offers Local Zones and AWS Wavelength in partnership with telecommunications providers, bringing infrastructure closer to users and 5G devices. This allows businesses to quickly scale up resources, deploying hundreds or thousands of servers in a matter of minutes to meet varying application needs.
• Flexibility: AWS infrastructure offers unmatched flexibility in terms of where and how you run workloads. Whether operating globally across multiple AWS regions and AZs or running workloads with ultra-low latency using AWS Local Zones or AWS Wavelength, the same control plane, APIs, and AWS services are available. If on-premises deployment is preferred, AWS Outposts is an option. For public sector organizations or highly regulated industries, AWS plans to introduce the AWS European Sovereign Cloud to meet specific regulatory needs.
• Scalability: AWS allows businesses to be highly adaptable, utilizing the cloud's scalable infrastructure. Previously, companies had to over-provision to ensure sufficient capacity during peak usage. Now, they can allocate exactly what they need and dynamically scale resources up or down based on demand. This elasticity helps reduce costs while ensuring businesses can respond quickly to changing operational requirements, deploying large numbers of servers in a matter of minutes.
• Global Footprint: AWS boasts the largest global infrastructure footprint among cloud providers, which continues to grow rapidly. When deploying workloads, you can select the infrastructure that is closest to your primary users, ensuring the best performance for even the most demanding applications. AWS supports workloads requiring high throughput and low latency, and for unique needs, such as satellite communication, AWS Ground Station provides satellite antennas near AWS regions for seamless data integration from space-based systems.

What Is AWS Infrastructure As A Code?

Infrastructure as Code (IaC) allows you to configure and manage computing infrastructure through code rather than manual processes and settings. Application environments contain several pieces of infrastructure (such as operating systems, database connections and storage) that developers often have to configure, upgrade, or patch in order to develop, test or deploy applications.

Managing infrastructure manually is time-consuming and error-prone, particularly at scale. With IaC you describe the desired state of your infrastructure rather than the steps to reach it. The tooling then manages this automatically so developers can concentrate on building and improving applications rather than on managing servers. Organizations embrace IaC to drive down costs risks and easily support new business opportunities.

What is AWS Infrastructure As A Service?

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) is a cloud computing model that provides IT infrastructure, including computing power, storage, and networking resources, on a pay-per-use basis via the internet. With IaaS, you can provision and configure the necessary resources to run your applications and systems. While you handle the deployment, management, and maintenance of your applications, the IaaS provider takes care of the underlying physical infrastructure. This model offers flexibility and control over your IT resources, allowing for efficient cost management.

Importance Of Infrastructure As A Service

IaaS offers the ability to increase your computing footprint while lowering IT costs. In the old days, companies had to purchase servers and run their own servers in the company's data center, in anticipation of exceptional bursts of traffic that required an upfront capital investment. Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) removes the difficulty of managing fluctuating demand by providing scalable, and flexible computing resources. Rather than owning and maintaining your own physical servers, you can rent what you need from having a cloud provider (like AWS) own and operate the infrastructure for you using their data centers located all over the world.

How Does Infrastructure As A Service Work?

Here's how IaaS works and why AWS infrastructure is significant:

1. Virtualization: IaaS providers create virtual versions of physical hardware (e.g., servers, storage) that function like actual devices but are managed in the cloud. Customers can choose their required configuration, and the provider handles the underlying infrastructure.

2. Flexible and Scalable: IaaS enables dynamic scaling based on current demand. During high-traffic periods like holidays, businesses can easily scale up their resources without investing in additional hardware. When traffic subsides, they can scale back down to minimize costs.

3. Managed Services: Beyond providing infrastructure, IaaS providers offer various management services such as:

• Monitoring & Logging: Ensures system performance is tracked, and any anomalies are flagged.
• Security Management: Applies consistent security policies across all components to protect data and systems.
• Automation: Includes automated policies for backups, disaster recovery, and load balancing to enhance reliability.

To know about

Configuration of AWS Backup you can refer to this link How to Configure AWS Backup

Disaster Recovery Strategies in AWS you can refer to this link AWS Disaster Recovery Strategies