Architecting for Scale

Chapter 21. Distributing the Cloud

We all know the value of distributing an application across multiple data centers. The same philosophy applies to the cloud. As we put portions of our applications, or complete applications, into the cloud, we need to watch where in the cloud they are located. How distributed our applications are is just as important in cloud approaches as it is with normal data centers, particularly as applications scale.

However, the cloud makes knowing whether your application is distributed more difficult. The cloud also makes it more difficult to proactively make your application more distributed. Some cloud providers don’t even expose enough information to let you know where, geographically, your application is running.

Luckily, larger providers like AWS, although they won’t tell you specifically where your application is running, will give you enough information to make decisions about where your application is running. Interpreting and understanding this information and using it to your advantage requires an understanding of how AWS is architected.

AWS Architecture

First, let’s discuss some terms used within the AWS ecosystem.

AWS Region

An AWS region is a large area connection of cloud resources that represent a specific geographic area. In general, regions represent a portion of an individual continent or country (such as Western Europe, Northeastern Asia-Pacific, and United States East). They describe and document geographic diversity of cloud resources. ...