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Okay so the next key component in the AWS global infra after regions are Availability Zones or AZs.If you're coming from Oracle Cloud World then over there we call it the ADs or the Availability Domains. So don't get confused in AWS world, we call it AZs or Availability Zones

The AWS Regions provide multiple physically separated and isolated Availability Zones which are connected with low latency, high throughput and highly redundant networking. The AZs in a region are actually connected through low latency links as you can see here

We have the region and in that region we have three Availability Zones and these Availability Zones are connected to each other through a network which provides high throughput and low latency.

So again Availability Zones are connected to each other with fast private fibre optic networking which enables you to easily architect applications that can automatically failover between Availability Zones without any interruption and very important point and availability zone is actually represented by a code which is followed by a letter identifier.

So as I told you that we have different regions and in that region we have AZs. Now you'll see that whenever AWS actually specifies or whenever you have to specify AZ, you have to give it a specific name.So it is actually named as us-west-2a, so if this one AZ is 2a then you would have different AZs as us- west-2b and us-west-2c.

So it's just a naming convention that you need to be aware of.

And at the time of launching the instance you're given an option on the AZ, let's say you when you're creating a resource let's say you're creating an EC2 machine.Now as soon as you are about to create your EC2 machine you are actually given an option where exactly or in which Availability Zone do you want this resource or service to be created.So you are given an option if you don't select then it will actually automatically choose it for you, but just keep in mind that if you want to like balance your different resources then you can always specify your specific AZ again if this one is us-west-2a, 2b, 2c you can select any of these.

And the Availability Zones or AZ is also bringing a great concept of Elastic IP addresses.

Now what happens with Elastic IP addresses?

 with the Elastic IP addresses you can easily mask the failure of an instance or software by rapidly remapping the address to another instance in your account.So that actually sums up the differences between Regions and Availability Zones.

So Regions are nothing but your geographical area, Availability Zones are nothing but a collection of multiple data centres and as you can see from the figure above, in a Region you have different Availability Zones and they are connected through a network which provides high throughput and low latency and always remember that they are actually specified by a letter identifier which is something of this sort which is us-west-2a could be us-east-1a a something like that, and at the time of launching the instance you are given the option to choose your AZ.

Happy Learning !!!

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