AWS Cloud Availability Zones

What is an Availability Zone (AZ)?

An Availability Zone (AZ) is one or more data centers within a Region, each with independent power, networking, and connectivity. Every Region has at least three AZs.

AZs are physically separated to reduce disaster risk, yet close enough for low-latency communication between them.

Availability Zones Video

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Availability Zones Illustration

The diagram shows three US West Regions, each containing multiple Availability Zones. Zooming into N. California reveals three AZs (US-West-1A, 1B, 1C), each representing a group of data centers.

Image created by Amazon Web Services

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High Availability

Deploy resources across multiple AZs so your application continues running even if one zone fails. This provides:

• High availability: Continuous operation without downtime
• Agility: Quick adaptation to changing requirements
• Elasticity: Automatic scaling based on demand

Availability Zone is a single Data Center or a  of Data Centers

In the next chapter, you will learn about Edge Locations.