Have you seen the movie ‘Field of Dreams’ starring Kevin Costner? There was a saying in this movie that reminds me of how Microsoft and Amazon are expanding their datacenters at such a rapid pace. This brings me to today’s topic, ‘If You Build it, They Will Come’.
Today I wanted to spend a little time discussing Azure and AWS datacenter locations. I think we would all agree that there are two major players in the public cloud arena, AWS and Azure. Being in a consultant role we are constantly asked by customers which public cloud provider they should use. This brings up a much deeper conversation that I am not going to get into in this post. However, for simplistic sake, let’s just say they both have similar service offerings with each having their strengths. With that said, many times customers are looking for in-region support. This could be due to regulations and/or restrictions imposed. Now, the answer to their questions starts to become a little easier. Both AWS and Azure are constantly planning and building new datacenters so I thought it would be good to give an update on the actual datacenters that are in GA today as well as the planned datacenters.
Azure
Microsoft is continuously investing in the latest infrastructure technologies, with a focus on high reliability, operational excellence, cost-effectiveness, and environmental sustainability. This is apparent from the early days of the Gen1 datacenters to the newer Gen4 datacenters. Have you ever wondered what it would be like to tour one of these datacenters? Check out this video for a Microsoft Datacenter Tour. Along the way Microsoft has revolutionized the way they build and deploy their pods for the Gen4 datacenters. Check out this video for insights into the ITPAC. It is quite remarkable that technology has come so far to allow this sort of architectural design.
Today, Azure is generally available in 30 regions around the world with the latest additions being Germany Central and Germany Northeast. Microsoft has also announced plans for 6 additional regions which would bring their total count to 36 regions. Each Azure region is paired with another that is several hundred miles apart. For the most part the pairings are easily recognizable with exception of Central US/East US2 and Brazil South/South Central US.
Locations ( Generally Available)
Azure Region | Location |
---|---|
Central US | Iowa |
East US | Virginia |
East US 2 | Virginia |
US Gov Iowa | Iowa |
US Gov Virginia | Virginia |
North Central US | Illinois |
South Central US | Texas |
West US | California |
North Europe | Ireland |
West Europe | Netherlands |
East Asia | Hong Kong |
Southeast Asia | Singapore |
Japan East | Tokyo, Saitama |
Japan West | Osaka |
Brazil South | Sao Paulo State |
Australia East | New South Wales |
Australia Southeast | Victoria |
Central India | Pune |
South India | Chennai |
West India | Mumbai |
China East | Shanghai |
China North | Beijing |
Canada Central | Toronto |
Canada East | Quebec City |
United Kingdom South | London, England |
United Kingdom West | Cardiff, Wales |
Germany Central | Frankfurt |
Germany Northeast | Magdeburg |
Newly Announced Regions
Azure Region | Location |
---|---|
US DoD East | To be announced |
US DoD West | To be announced |
France Central | To be announced |
France South | To be announced |
Korea Central | Seoul |
Korea South | To be announced |
For the most up-to-date listing of Azure regions and to verify if a specific service is available in a region, refer to this link. Keep in mind that not all services are available in all regions.
AWS
Amazon is continuing its AWS datacenter expansions across the globe as well. Some say its primarily due to the anticipation of new privacy laws and new regulations, some of which haven’t been passed into law just yet. Based on Amazon’s latest earnings report, they don’t seem to be slowing down any. Their AWS service accounted for 56% of the companies profit this past quarter and its Amazon’s most profitable business.
The AWS Cloud operates 35 Availability Zones within 13 geographic Regions around the world, with 12 more Availability Zones and 5 more Regions coming online throughout the next year. The AWS cloud infrastructure is built around regions and availability zones. Regions are physical locations each comprised of two or more availability zones. Availability zones are comprised of one or more datacenters. Some zones may not be available to new customers based on capacity.
Image courtesy of Amazon
Locations
AWS Region | Location |
---|---|
US East | Northern Virgina |
US West | Northern California |
US West | Oregon |
AWS GovCloud | US |
South America | Sao Paulo |
EU | Ireland |
EU | Frankfurt |
Asia Pacific | Singapore |
Asia Pacific | Tokyo |
Asia Pacific | Sydney |
Asia Pacific | Seoul |
China | Beijing |
Asia Pacific | Mumbai |
Newly Announced Regions
AWS Region | Location |
---|---|
TBA | Ohio |
TBA | Montreal |
TBA | UK |
TBA | Paris |
TBA | Ningxia |
For the most up-to-date listing of AWS regions and to verify if a specific service is available in a region, refer to this link.
However you want to read into this, its pretty impressive that both Microsoft and Amazon are able to continuously expand their public cloud offerings to meet customer demand. Whether you are running dev/test or production, wotking with IaaS or PaaS workloads, take advantage of what the public cloud offers.