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Asad Ullah
Asad Ullah

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AWS AZ vs Region Scoped Services

A common perception in cloud development is that there isn't much to do when we work with AWS managed services. However depending on the AWS service you use, your resources are either deployed at the AZ, Region, or Global level. Each service is different, so you must understand how the scope of a service might affect your application architecture.

When you operate a Region-scoped service, you only need to select the Region you want to use. If you are not asked to specify an individual AZ to deploy the service in, this is an indicator that the service operates on a Region-scope level. For Region-scoped services, AWS automatically performs actions to increase data durability and availability. On the other hand, some services ask you to specify an AZ. With these services, you are often responsible for increasing the data durability and high availability of these resources.

A well-known best practice for cloud architecture is to use Region-scoped, managed services. These services come with availability and resiliency built in. When that is not possible, make sure your workload is replicated across multiple AZs. At a minimum, you should use two AZs. That way, if an AZ fails, your application will have infrastructure up and running in a second AZ to take over the traffic.

A key concept about whether you are using managed services or managing the infra yourself, is that AWS's customers maintain complete control of their data and are responsible for managing the security related to their content.

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