Module 3 Introduction

Learning objectives

In this module, you will learn how to:

• Summarize the benefits of the AWS Global Infrastructure.

• Describe the basic concept of Availability Zones.

• Describe the benefits of Amazon CloudFront and edge locations.

• Compare different methods for provisioning AWS services.

When determining the right Region for your services, data, and applications,
consider the following four business factors.

To learn more Regions, expand each of the following four categories.

COMPLIANCE WITH DATA GOVERNACE AND LEGAL REQUIREMENTS:

Depending on your company and location, you might need to run your data out of
specific areas. For example, if your company requires all of its data to reside within
the boundaries of the UK, you would choose the London Region.

Not all companies have location-specific data regulations, so you might need to
focus more on the other three factors.

PROXIMITY TO YOUR CUSTOMERS:

Selecting a Region that is close to your customers will help you to get content to
them faster. For example, your company is based in Washington, DC, and many of
your customers live in Singapore. You might consider running your infrastructure in
the Northern Virginia Region to be close to company headquarters, and run your
applications from the Singapore Region.

AVAILABLE SERVICES WITHIN A REGION

Sometimes, the closest Region might not have all the features that you want to
offer to customers. AWS is frequently innovating by creating new services and
expanding on features within existing services. However, making new services
available around the world sometimes requires AWS to build out physical
hardware one Region at a time.
PRICING

Suppose that your developers want to build an application that uses Amazon
Braket (AWS quantum computing platform). As of this course, Amazon Braket is
not yet available in every AWS Region around the world, so your developers would
have to run it in one of the Regions that already offers it.

Suppose that you are considering running applications in both the United States
and Brazil. The way Brazil’s tax structure is set up, it might cost 50% more to run
the same workload out of the São Paulo Region compared to the Oregon Region.
You will learn in more detail that several factors determine pricing, but for now
know that the cost of services can vary from Region to Region.

Availability Zones

Spotlight on the us-west-1 Region. Northern California, Oregon, and GovCloud

(US-West) are separate Regions. The Northern California Region is called us-west-
1, and this Region contains three AZs (1a, 1b, and 1c). Then, within each AZ there
are three data centers.

An Availability Zone is a single data center or a group of data centers within a

Region. Availability Zones are located tens of miles apart from each other. This is
close enough to have low latency (the time between when content requested and
received) between Availability Zones. However, if a disaster occurs in one part of
the Region, they are distant enough to reduce the chance that multiple Availability
Zones are affected.

To review an example of running Amazon EC2 instances in multiple Availability

Zones, choose the arrow buttons.
Amazon EC2 instance in a single Availability Zone

Suppose that you’re running an application on a single Amazon EC2 instance in the
Northern California Region. The instance is running in the us-west-1a Availability
Zone. If us-west-1a were to fail, you would lose your instance.

Amazon EC2 instances in multiple Availability Zones

A best practice is to run applications across at least two Availability Zones in a
Region. In this example, you might choose to run a second Amazon EC2 instance
in us-west-1b.

1.

Step 3

Availability Zone failure

If us-west-1a were to fail, your application would still be running in us-west-1b.

Availability Zone failure

If us-west-1a were to fail, your application would still be running in us-west-1b.
The correct response option is A single data center or group of data centers
within a Region.

The other response options are incorrect because:

• A Region is a geographical area that contains AWS resources.

• An edge location is a data center that an AWS service uses to perform

service-specific operations. Edge locations are examined in the next
section of this module.

• AWS Outposts is a service that you can use to run AWS infrastructure,
services, and tools in your own on-premises data center in a hybrid
approach. AWS Outposts is explored later in this module.

Edge locations

An edge location is a site that Amazon CloudFront uses to store cached copies of
your content closer to your customers for faster delivery.

To learn more, choose each of the numbered markers.

Origin

Suppose that your company’s data is stored in Brazil, and you have customers who
live in China. To provide content to these customers, you don’t need to move all
the content to one of the Chinese Regions.

Edge location

Instead of requiring your customers to get their data from Brazil, you can cache a
copy locally at an edge location that is close to your customers in China.

Customer

When a customer in China requests one of your files, Amazon CloudFront retrieves
the file from the cache in the edge location and delivers the file to the customer.
The file is delivered to the customer faster because it came from the edge location
near China instead of the original source in Brazil.

Ways to interact with AWS services

To learn about ways to interact with AWS services choose each of the following
three tabs.

The AWS Management Console is a web-based interface for accessing and

managing AWS services. You can quickly access recently used services and search
for other services by name, keyword, or acronym. The console includes wizards
and automated workflows that can simplify the process of completing tasks.

You can also use the AWS Console mobile application to perform tasks such as
monitoring resources, viewing alarms, and accessing billing information. Multiple
identities can stay logged into the AWS Console mobile app at the same time.

To save time when making API requests, you can use the AWS Command Line
Interface (AWS CLI). AWS CLI enables you to control multiple AWS services
directly from the command line within one tool. AWS CLI is available for users on
Windows, macOS, and Linux.

By using AWS CLI, you can automate the actions that your services and
applications perform through scripts. For example, you can use commands to
launch an Amazon EC2 instance, connect an Amazon EC2 instance to a specific
Auto Scaling group, and more.

Another option for accessing and managing AWS services is the software
development kits (SDKs). SDKs make it easier for you to use AWS services
through an API designed for your programming language or platform. SDKs enable
you to use AWS services with your existing applications or create entirely new
applications that will run on AWS.

To help you get started with using SDKs, AWS provides documentation and sample
code for each supported programming language. Supported programming
languages include C++, Java, .NET, and more.

AWS Elastic Beanstalk

With AWS Elastic Beanstalk, you provide code and configuration settings, and
Elastic Beanstalk deploys the resources necessary to perform the following tasks:

• Adjust capacity

• Load balancing

• Automatic scaling

• Application health monitoring

AWS CloudFormation

With AWS CloudFormation, you can treat your infrastructure as code. This means
that you can build an environment by writing lines of code instead of using the AWS
Management Console to individually provision resources.

AWS CloudFormation provisions your resources in a safe, repeatable manner,

enabling you to frequently build your infrastructure and applications without
having to perform manual actions. It determines the right operations to perform
when managing your stack and rolls back changes automatically if it detects
errors.
he correct response option is A Region consists of three or more Availability
Zones.

For example, the South America (São Paulo) Region is sa-east-1. It includes three
Availability Zones: sa-east-1a, sa-east-1b, and sa-east-1c.

The correct two response options are:

• Compliance with data governance and legal requirements

• Proximity to your customers

Two other factors to consider when selecting a Region are pricing and the services
that are available in a Region.

The other response options are incorrect because:

• The level of support that you choose is not determined by Region. AWS
Support plans are explored later in this course.

• Assigning custom permissions to different users is a feature that is possible

in all AWS Regions.

• The AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI) is available in all AWS
Regions.

The correct response option is A global content delivery service.

Amazon CloudFront is a content delivery service. It uses a network of edge

locations to cache content and deliver content to customers all over the world.
When content is cached, it is stored locally as a copy. This content might be video
files, photos, webpages, and so on.

The other response options are incorrect because:

• AWS Outposts is a service that enables you to run infrastructure in a hybrid

cloud approach.
 • AWS Fargate is a serverless compute engine for containers.

• Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS) is a service that enables you
to send, store, and receive messages between software components
through a queue.

The correct response option is Edge location.

The other response options are incorrect because:

• A Region is a separate geographical location with multiple locations that are

isolated from each other.

• An Availability Zone is a fully isolated portion of the AWS global

infrastructure.

• An origin is the server from which CloudFront gets your files. Examples of
CloudFront origins include Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3)
buckets and web servers. Note: Amazon S3 is explored later in this course.
The correct response option is Extend AWS infrastructure and services to
different locations, including your on-premises data center.

The other response options are incorrect because:

• The AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI) is used to automate actions
for AWS services and applications through scripts.

• The AWS Management Console includes wizards and workflows that you
can use to complete tasks in AWS services.

• Software development kits (SDKs) enable you to develop AWS applications

in supported programming languages.