Cloud Computing
Region
Definition
In cloud computing, a region is a physical location in the world where a cloud provider has a cluster of data centers. Each region is a separate geographic area.
Why It Matters
Regions allow you to deploy your applications closer to your end-users to reduce latency. They are also used for disaster recovery; if one region goes down due to a natural disaster, your application can failover to another region.
Contextual Example
A company with customers in both North America and Europe might deploy their application in both the AWS `us-east-1` (N. Virginia) region and the `eu-west-1` (Ireland) region.
Common Misunderstandings
- Regions are completely isolated from each other. Services are generally specific to a region.
- Each region consists of multiple, isolated locations known as Availability Zones.