AWS has opened Local Zones in Atlanta, Phoenix, and Seattle.
Local Zones act as Edge locations to host applications that require low latency to end-users or on-premises installations. Each zone offers select services (compute, storage, database, etc.) within Local Zones close to population centers for latency-sensitive applications, usually where Amazon doesn't have an existing data center footprint. Each Zone is a ‘child’ of a particular parent region, and is managed by the control plane in that region.
“Today we are announcing the general availability of AWS Local Zones in Atlanta, Phoenix, and Seattle. Customers can now use these new Local Zones to deliver applications that require single-digit millisecond latency to end-users or for on-premises installations in these three metro areas,” the company said in a post announcing the news.
First announced in 2019, the company now has 17 Local Zones in 16 metros, having launched 15 last year. Local Zones are also generally available in Boston, Chicago, Denver, Dallas, Houston, Kansas City, Los Angeles (x2), Las Vegas, Miami, Minneapolis, New York City, Portland, and Philadelphia. The company hasn't announced plans for any more US locations.
Despite requests from DCD, AWS hasn't detailed the facilities its Local Zone infrastructure sits within.
In December AWS announced it would be launching Local Zones globally, opening 30 Edge locations in more than 20 countries throughout the year. AWS hasn’t detailed which cities will be served but has promised Zones in the following countries: Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Greece, India, Kenya, Netherlands, Norway, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, and South Africa.
The company also operates Wavelength Zones, a service which provides compute and storage, sitting within telecom providers' 5G networks, also providing access to cloud services running in a nearby AWS Region.
Verizon is AWS’ Wavelength partner in the US, providing Zones in 13 US cities; Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Houston, Las Vegas, Miami, New York City Phoenix, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington DC.
AWS has partnered with Vodafone to launch a Wavelength Zone service in London, UK, as well as the German cities of Berlin, Munich, and Dortmund. The service is also available in Tokyo and Osaka, Japan, through KDDI; and Daejeon, South Korea, through SK Telecom.
