The EC2 instance which we created was in North Virginia. This is called a Region in the AWS terminology, which is a separate geographic area. The Region can be selected from the top right of the AWS management console as shown below.
The price for the different services change from Region to Region. For ex., the hourly cost of creating an EC2 instance in Mumbai Region is different from the North Virginia Region. Usually, I do select the North Virginia Region when I try to explore some thing new in AWS as resources in North Virginia Region are the cheapest when compared to the other Regions. You can check the EC2 on-demand pricing for the different Regions here. By changing the Region, the price will change automatically.
For the sake of HA (High Availability) we can create an EC2 instance in North Virginia Region which acts like a primary server and the backup server can be created in Mumbai Region. If there is a problem in one Region, still we have the servers in another Region.
Each Region is a separate geographic area. And within each Region there are multiple Availability Zones (AZs) as shown below. A Region has at least 2 AZs. As of this writing there are 16 Regions and 42 AZs and Amazon is expanding them on a regular basis. Each AZ will have redundant power, networking and other resources. This way there is no common point of failure across any two AZs. Note that, each AZ need not be a single Data Center, it can more than one Data Center. More details here and here.
The Region can be selected by using the drop down option as mentioned above and the AZ can be selected at the time of the resource creation like an EC2 as shown below.
Lets say say we want to create 4 EC2 instances in a particular Region. Instead of creating them in a single AZ, it's a best practice to create them across multiple AZs in a balanced fashion as it provides better HA. By default, when we create any resource in AWS, we have to go with the assumptions that THINGS WILL FAIL and architect for HA.
Lets look in a bit more detail. In the Mumbai Region (ap-south-1), there are two AZs (ap-south-1a and ap-south-1b). Within Ohio (us-east-2) there are three AZs (us-east-2a, us-east-2b and us-east-2c). The requirement is to create 4 EC2 instances.
In the below, we are creating all the EC2 instances in a single AZ (ap-south-1a). So, if there is any problem in that particular AZ then the entire service will be down.
To avoid the above mentioned problem, it's recommended to create the instances in different AZs as shown below and also have a backup instances in a entirely different Region.
Another reason besides HA to have instances in different Regions, might be for the sake of compliance. The industry regulations might suggest, that the servers should be in different Regions.
Then how to dynamically shift the load from the primary instances to the backup instances in the case of a failure? This can be done using Route53, which we will be looking in a future blog.
The price for the different services change from Region to Region. For ex., the hourly cost of creating an EC2 instance in Mumbai Region is different from the North Virginia Region. Usually, I do select the North Virginia Region when I try to explore some thing new in AWS as resources in North Virginia Region are the cheapest when compared to the other Regions. You can check the EC2 on-demand pricing for the different Regions here. By changing the Region, the price will change automatically.
For the sake of HA (High Availability) we can create an EC2 instance in North Virginia Region which acts like a primary server and the backup server can be created in Mumbai Region. If there is a problem in one Region, still we have the servers in another Region.
Each Region is a separate geographic area. And within each Region there are multiple Availability Zones (AZs) as shown below. A Region has at least 2 AZs. As of this writing there are 16 Regions and 42 AZs and Amazon is expanding them on a regular basis. Each AZ will have redundant power, networking and other resources. This way there is no common point of failure across any two AZs. Note that, each AZ need not be a single Data Center, it can more than one Data Center. More details here and here.
The Region can be selected by using the drop down option as mentioned above and the AZ can be selected at the time of the resource creation like an EC2 as shown below.
Lets say say we want to create 4 EC2 instances in a particular Region. Instead of creating them in a single AZ, it's a best practice to create them across multiple AZs in a balanced fashion as it provides better HA. By default, when we create any resource in AWS, we have to go with the assumptions that THINGS WILL FAIL and architect for HA.
Lets look in a bit more detail. In the Mumbai Region (ap-south-1), there are two AZs (ap-south-1a and ap-south-1b). Within Ohio (us-east-2) there are three AZs (us-east-2a, us-east-2b and us-east-2c). The requirement is to create 4 EC2 instances.
In the below, we are creating all the EC2 instances in a single AZ (ap-south-1a). So, if there is any problem in that particular AZ then the entire service will be down.
To avoid the above mentioned problem, it's recommended to create the instances in different AZs as shown below and also have a backup instances in a entirely different Region.
Then how to dynamically shift the load from the primary instances to the backup instances in the case of a failure? This can be done using Route53, which we will be looking in a future blog.
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