As of June 2024, there are 34 regions available at AWS and more than 105 Availability zones.
List of the 34 AWS Regions
| Region | Country | Region name | Availability Zone |
|---|---|---|---|
| Atlanta | US | US East (N. Virginia) | us-east-1-atl-2a |
| Auckland | New Zealand | Asia Pacific (Sydney) | ap-southeast-2-akl-1a |
| Bangkok | Thailand | Asia Pacific (Singapore) | ap-southeast-1-bkk-1a |
| Boston | US | US East (N. Virginia) | us-east-1-bos-1a |
| Buenos Aires | Argentina | US East (N. Virginia) | us-east-1-bue-1a |
| Chicago | US | US East (N. Virginia) | us-east-1-chi-2a |
| Copenhagen | Denmark | Europe (Stockholm) | eu-north-1-cph-1a |
| Dallas | US | US East (N. Virginia) | us-east-1-dfw-2a |
| Delhi | India | Asia Pacific (Mumbai) | ap-south-1-del-1a |
| Denver | US | US West (Oregon) | us-west-2-den-1a |
| Hamburg | Germany | Europe (Frankfurt) | eu-central-1-ham-1a |
| Helsinki | Finland | Europe (Stockholm) | eu-north-1-hel-1a |
| Honolulu | US | US West (Oregon) | us-west-2-hnl-1a |
| Houston | US | US East (N. Virginia) | us-east-1-iah-2a |
| Kansas City | US | US East (N. Virginia) | us-east-1-mci-1a |
| Kolkata | India | Asia Pacific (Mumbai) | ap-south-1-ccu-1a |
| Lagos | Nigeria | Africa (Cape Town) | af-south-1-los-1a |
| Las Vegas | US | US West (Oregon) | us-west-2-las-1a |
| Lima | Peru | US East (N. Virginia) | us-east-1-lim-1a |
| Los Angeles | US | US West (Oregon) | us-west-2-lax-1a, 1b |
| Manila | Philippines | Asia Pacific (Singapore) | ap-southeast-1-mnl-1a |
| Miami | US | US East (N. Virginia) | us-east-1-mia-2a |
| Minneapolis | US | US East (N. Virginia) | us-east-1-msp-1a |
| Muscat | Oman | Middle East (Bahrain) | me-south-1-mct-1a |
| New York City (NJ) | US | US East (N. Virginia) | us-east-1-nyc-1a |
| Perth | Australia | Asia Pacific (Sydney) | ap-southeast-2-per-1a |
| Philadelphia | US | US East (N. Virginia) | us-east-1-phl-1a |
| Phoenix | US | US West (Oregon) | us-west-2-phx-2a |
| Portland | US | US West (Oregon) | us-west-2-pdx-1a |
| Querétaro | Mexico | US East (N. Virginia) | us-east-1-qro-1a |
| Santiago | Chile | US East (N. Virginia) | us-east-1-scl-1a |
| Seattle | US | US West (Oregon) | us-west-2-sea-1a |
| Taipei | Taiwan | Asia Pacific (Tokyo) | ap-northeast-1-tpe-1a |
| Warsaw | Poland | Europe (Frankfurt) | eu-central-1-waw-1a |
Explanation of AWS Regions and Availability Zones
Regions
- Definition: A region is a physical location around the world where AWS clusters data centers.
- Purpose: Regions enable users to deploy their applications and services closer to their end-users, reducing latency and improving performance.
- Example: “US East (N. Virginia)” (us-east-1) is an AWS region located on the East Coast of the United States.
Availability Zones (AZs)
- Definition: An availability zone is an isolated location within a region. Each region consists of multiple AZs, typically 2-3, sometimes more.
- Purpose: AZs allow for high availability by distributing resources across multiple isolated locations within a region. This setup helps in achieving fault tolerance and low-latency networking.
- Example: In the “US East (N. Virginia)” region, you might have AZs such as “us-east-1a”, “us-east-1b”, and “us-east-1c”. These are separate data centers within the same region, providing redundancy and resilience.
AWS is growing fast and creating new regions and AZs every year. For example in 2017, AWS had only 16 regions worldwide and 42 availability zones meaning they have doubled their coverage in 7 years. Each newly opening cost hundreds of million if not billion so we can see that even if very profitable it is very capital expensive to build/operate data centers. For example AWS had announced very recently that they will open an AWS European Sovereign Cloud in Germany and they will invest €7.8 billion by 2040. For the years to come AWS has already announced 14 new regions. Here is the list of regions that AWS announced :
Announced AWS Locations
| City | Country | Zone Name | Parent Region |
|---|---|---|---|
| Amsterdam | Netherlands | eu-central-1-ams-1a | Europe (Frankfurt) |
| Athens | Greece | eu-south-1-ath-1a | Europe (Milan) |
| Bogotá | Colombia | us-east-1-bog-1a | US East (N. Virginia) |
| Brussels | Belgium | eu-west-3-bru-1a | Europe (Paris) |
| Hanoi | Vietnam | ap-southeast-1-han-1a | Asia Pacific (Singapore) |
| Johannesburg | South Africa | af-south-1-jnb-1a | Africa (Cape Town) |
| Lisbon | Portugal | eu-south-2-lis-1a | Europe (Spain) |
| Nairobi | Kenya | af-south-1-nbo-1a | Africa (Cape Town) |
| Oslo | Norway | eu-north-1-osl-1a | Europe (Stockholm) |
| Prague | Czech Republic | eu-central-1-prg-1a | Europe (Frankfurt) |
| Rio de Janeiro | Brazil | us-east-1-rio-1a | US East (N. Virginia) |
| Toronto | Canada | ca-central-1-yto-1a | Canada (Central) |
| Vancouver | Canada | ca-west-1-yvr-1a | Canada West (Calgary) |
| Vienna | Austria | eu-central-1-vie-1a | Europe (Frankfurt) |
For further details, you can visit the AWS Local Zones locations page.
Wrap up
Mastering AWS regions and Availability zone is very important because you may need low latency or avoid expensive egress costs or simply because you want to find locations that are cheaper. For example India is quite cheap and South America is very expensive.
Because each AWS account comes with default regions and VPCs, you may be submerged by information and it’s preferable to delete them. If you need to map your AWS environment and discover all your assets in the different regions and availability zones you can use Holori. It will generates a diagram of all your assets in their regions and AZs as well as retrieve their cost. This graphical view allow you to grasp the complexity of your AWS environment, identify zombie resources and optimize your costs and configuration.
Try it out now: https://app.holori.com/
