What are the differences between AWS regions and availability zones?

AWS regions and availability zones are key components of the AWS cloud infrastructure, and understanding their differences is essential for effective cloud deployment and management. A region is a geographical area that consists of multiple data centers, which are referred to as availability zones. Each AWS region is isolated from others, providing a level of fault tolerance and enabling customers to choose a region based on their specific requirements, such as latency, compliance, or data residency. On the other hand, an availability zone is a distinct location within a region. It is essentially a cluster of one or more data centers that are isolated from failures in other availability zones within the same region. This means that if one availability zone experiences an outage, the others in the same region will continue to operate. AWS recommends distributing applications across multiple availability zones to enhance fault tolerance and availability. In essence, while a region is a broad geographical area encompassing various availability zones, each availability zone is a separate physical location within that region designed to provide high availability and redundancy. This architecture allows users to build resilient applications that can withstand hardware failures or other disruptions. For further in-depth information, users may explore the AWS website or documentation.