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.