The global infrastructure is foundational on every AWS exam. A Region is a geographic area; each Region contains multiple isolated Availability Zones (AZs); and edge locations sit closer to users for content delivery.
Region vs AZ vs edge
A Region is a physical location (e.g., us-east-1). An Availability Zone is one or more discrete data centers within a Region, isolated from failures in other AZs — deploying across multiple AZs is how you build high availability. Edge locations cache content (CloudFront) near users. High availability → spread across AZs.
Test yourself
To make an application highly available so it survives a single data-center failure, how should you deploy it within a Region?
- In a single Availability Zone
- Across multiple Availability Zones
- In a single edge location
- In multiple Regions only
👉 Click to reveal the answer & explanation
Correct answer: B. Deploying across multiple AZs protects against a single data-center (AZ) failure — the standard HA pattern within a Region. A single AZ (A) is a single point of failure; edge locations (C) are for content delivery; multi-Region (D) is for DR/geo, beyond the single-Region HA asked here.
Related topics
Edge locations · Disaster Recovery Strategies · Amazon CloudFront
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