Question

Difficulty: MediumAWS Global Infrastructure

A technology startup is deploying an application that requires high availability within a single geographic area. The team plans to distribute the application's resources across multiple Availability Zones (AZs). Which statement correctly describes the architectural relationship between AWS Regions and Availability Zones?

  1. An AWS Region is a geographic area that contains multiple, physically separated and isolated Availability Zones.Answer
  2. B
    An Availability Zone is a geographic area containing multiple AWS Regions, which are connected by low-latency networks.
  3. C
    An Availability Zone consists of a single physical data center, and each AWS Region is comprised of exactly one Availability Zone.
  4. D
    An AWS Region is a single physical building, while Availability Zones represent the different floors within that building to provide hardware isolation.

Answer

An AWS Region is a geographic area that contains multiple, physically separated and isolated Availability Zones.
The correct option correctly states that an AWS Region is a geographic area that contains multiple, physically separated and isolated Availability Zones. This design ensures that if one zone is affected by a local disaster, the others remain operational, supporting high availability.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Analyze the hierarchy of the AWS Global Infrastructure.
Identify that AWS Regions represent the top-level geographic divisions, while Availability Zones (AZs) exist inside these Regions.
Understanding this hierarchy is necessary to eliminate options that invert the relationship between Regions and AZs.
2
Determine the physical definition of an Availability Zone.
Recall that an Availability Zone consists of one or more physical data centers, and a Region contains multiple AZs.
This helps rule out options that define an AZ as only a single data center or a single building floor, or suggest a Region contains only one AZ.
3
Select the option that correctly describes both hierarchy and physical independence.
The statement explaining that an AWS Region is a geographic area containing multiple isolated Availability Zones is correct.
This aligns with AWS Global Infrastructure design principles for fault isolation and high availability.

Key Concept

AWS Regions and Availability Zones Architecture
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