Global Infrastructure
- Global Infrastructure
Why make a global application?
- A global application is an application deployed in multiple geographies
- On AWS: this could be Regions and / or Edge Locations
- Decreased Latency
- Latency is the time it takes for a network packet to reach a server
- It takes time for a packet from Asia to reach the US
- Deploy your applications closer to your users to decrease latency, better experience
- Disaster Recovery (DR)
- If an AWS region goes down (earthquake, storms, power shutdown, politics)…
- You can fail-over to another region and have your application still working
- A DR plan is important to increase the availability of your application
- Attack protection: distributed global infrastructure is harder to attack
Global AWS Infrastructure
- Regions: For deploying applications and infrastructure
- Availability Zones: Made of multiple data centers
- Edge Locations (Points of Presence): for content delivery as close as possible to users
- More at: https://infrastructure.aws/
Global Applications in AWS
- Global DNS: Route 53
- Great to route users to the closest deployment with least latency
- Great for disaster recovery strategies
- Global Content Delivery Network (CDN): CloudFront
- Replicate part of your application to AWS Edge Locations – decrease latency
- Cache common requests – improved user experience and decreased latency
- S3 Transfer Acceleration
- Accelerate global uploads & downloads into Amazon S3
- AWS Global Accelerator:
- Improve global application availability and performance using the AWS global network
Amazon Route 53 Overview
- Route53 is a Managed DNS (Domain Name System)
- DNS is a collection of rules and records which helps clients understand how to reach a server through URLs.
- In AWS, the most common records are:
- www.google.com => 12.34.56.78 == A record (IPv4)
- www.google.com => 2001:0db8:85a3:0000:0000:8a2e:0370:7334 == AAAA IPv6
- search.google.com => www.google.com == CNAME: hostname to hostname
- example.com => AWS resource == Alias (ex: ELB, CloudFront, S3, RDS, etc…)
Route 53 - Diagram for A Record
Route 53 Routing Policies
Need to know them at a high-level for the Cloud Practitioner Exam
- simple routing policy
- weighted routing policy
- latency routing policy
- failover routing policy
simple routing policy
- Use for a single resource that performs a given function for your domain
- for example, a web server that serves content for the example.com website.
- You can use simple routing to create records in a private hosted zone
weighted routing policy
- Use to route traffic to multiple resources in proportions that you specify.
- You can use weighted routing to create records in a private hosted zone.
latency routing policy
- Use when you have resources in multiple AWS Regions and you want to route traffic to the region that provides the best latency.
- You can use latency routing to create records in a private hosted zone.
failover routing policy
- Use when you want to configure active-passive failover.
- You can use failover routing to create records in a private hosted zone.
AWS CloudFront
- Content Delivery Network (CDN)
- Improves read performance, content is cached at the edge
- Improves users experience
- 216 Point of Presence globally (edge locations)
- DDoS protection (because worldwide), integration with Shield, AWS Web Application Firewall
- Source: https://aws.amazon.com/cloudfront/features/?nc=sn&loc=2
CloudFront - Origins
- S3 bucket
- For distributing files and caching them at the edge
- Enhanced security with CloudFront Origin Access Identity (OAI)
- CloudFront can be used as an ingress (to upload files to S3)
- Custom Origin (HTTP)
- Application Load Balancer
- EC2 instance
- S3 website (must first enable the bucket as a static S3 website)
- Any HTTP backend you want
CloudFront vs S3 Cross Region Replication
| CloudFront | S3 Cross Region Replication |
|---|---|
| Global Edge network | Must be setup for each region you want replication to happen |
| Files are cached for a TTL (Time to Live) (maybe a day) | Files are updated in near real-time, Read only |
| Great for static content that must be available everywhere | Great for dynamic content that needs to be available at low-latency in few regions |
S3 Transfer Acceleration
- Increase transfer speed by transferring file to an AWS edge location which will forward the data to the S3 bucket in the target region
- if we try to upload file to Australia S3 bucket it will take time using CloudFront we can rescue time.
- File in USA -> Edge Location(USA) -> S3 Bucket(Australia)
- Test the tool at: https://s3-accelerate-speedtest.s3-accelerate.amazonaws.com/en/accelerate-speed-comparsion.html
AWS Global Accelerator
- Improve global application availability and performance using the AWS global network
- Leverage the AWS internal network to optimize the route to your application (60% improvement)
- 2 Anycast IP are created for your application and traffic is sent through Edge Locations
- The Edge locations send the traffic to your application
- Test the tool at: https://speedtest.globalaccelerator.aws/#/
AWS Global Accelerator vs CloudFront
- They both use the AWS global network and its edge locations around the world
- Both services integrate with AWS Shield for DDoS protection.
- CloudFront – Content Delivery Network
- Improves performance for your cacheable content (such as images and videos)
- Content is served at the edge
- Global Accelerator
- No caching, proxying packets at the edge to applications running in one or more AWS Regions.
- Improves performance for a wide range of applications over TCP or UDP
- Good for HTTP use cases that require static IP addresses
- Good for HTTP use cases that required deterministic, fast regional failover
AWS Outposts
- Hybrid Cloud: businesses that keep an on - premises infrastructure alongside a cloud infrastructure
- Therefore, two ways of dealing with IT systems: • One for the AWS cloud (using the AWS console, CLI, and AWS APIs)
- One for their on-premises infrastructure
- AWS Outposts are “server racks” that offers the same AWS infrastructure, services, APIs & tools to build your own applications on-premises just as in the cloud
- AWS will setup and manage “Outposts Racks” within your on-premises infrastructure and you can start leveraging AWS services on-premises
- You are responsible for the Outposts Rack physical security
AWS Outposts Benefits
- Low-latency access to on-premises systems
- Local data processing
- Data residency
- Easier migration from on-premises to the cloud
- Fully managed service
- Some services that work on Outposts:
- EC2
- EBS
- S3
- EKS
- ECS
- RDS
- EMR
AWS WaveLength
- WaveLength Zones are infrastructure deployments embedded within the telecommunications providers’ datacenters at the edge of the 5G networks
- Brings AWS services to the edge of the 5G networks
- Example: EC2, EBS, VPC…
- Ultra-low latency applications through 5G networks
- Traffic doesn’t leave the Communication Service Provider’s (CSP) network
- High-bandwidth and secure connection to the parent AWS Region
- No additional charges or service agreements
- Use cases: Smart Cities, ML-assisted diagnostics, Connected Vehicles, Interactive Live Video Streams, AR/VR, Real-time Gaming
AWS Local Zones
- Places AWS compute, storage, database, and other selected AWS services closer to end users to run latency-sensitive applications
- Extend your VPC to more locations – “Extension of an AWS Region”
- Compatible with EC2, RDS, ECS, EBS, ElastiCache, Direct Connect …
- Example:
- AWS Region: N. Virginia (us-east-1)
- AWS Local Zones: Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Miami
Global Applications - Summary
- Global DNS: Route 53
- Great to route users to the closest deployment with least latency
- Great for disaster recovery strategies
- Global Content Delivery Network (CDN): CloudFront
- Replicate part of your application to AWS Edge Locations – decrease latency
- Cache common requests – improved user experience and decreased latency
- S3 Transfer Acceleration
- Accelerate global uploads & downloads into Amazon S3
- AWS Global Accelerator
- Improve global application availability and performance using the AWS global network
- AWS Outposts
- Deploy Outposts Racks in your own Data Centers to extend AWS services
- AWS WaveLength
- Brings AWS services to the edge of the 5G networks
- Ultra-low latency applications
- AWS Local Zones
- Bring AWS resources (compute, database, storage, …) closer to your users
- Good for latency-sensitive applications