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I've had this question for a while: do we know there are only 2-3 zones per region, or might there be 10-20 and, for example, my zone 'a' is your zone 'c', and

I've had this question for a while: do we know there are only 2-3 zones per region, or might there be 10-20 and, for example, my zone 'a' is your zone 'c', and neither of us has access to the other's zone 'b' (yours too old/loaded to be assigned to me; mine too new for you)?

jedberg 10y ago
Sort of. The "zones" are just logical constructs. They can be one building or many tied together with fat fiber links. And you're right that my "A" and your "A" may be different. They are randomly assigned the first time you launch a resource. Also, there are decommissioned zones that new accounts can't see but old ones can if they've ever launched something there before (if they haven't then that zone letter will be reassigned to a new zone with no one the wiser). Typically they won't let you launch new things in that zone, so it's in your bet interest to move out of it, lest your resources get out of balance. Edit: Oh and old accounts can always see new zones as far as I know. They just show up as new letters. But it's rare that they add new zones -- usually they just make old zones bigger.
- boulos 10y ago
  Right. In some set of slides, James Hamilton has certainly said at least how many buildings there are for us-east-1 and it's a lot more than the up to four zones people see (IIRC, >26). Most customers will never notice the randomization of building => zone, but every once in a while you rely on a vendor like MongoLabs and its important you both are speaking about the same us-east1-b. The AWS folks let you tie yourself together in case you have multiple projects that need identical mappings.
  - jedberg 10y ago
    Us-east actually has five zone, but one of them was decommissioned many years ago, so unless your account is very old, you can only see four. As far as I know, that's the only zone that's ever been fully decommissioned.

jedberg 10y ago

Sort of. The "zones" are just logical constructs. They can be one building or many tied together with fat fiber links. And you're right that my "A" and your "A" may be different. They are randomly assigned the first time you launch a resource. Also, there are decommissioned zones that new accounts can't see but old ones can if they've ever launched something there before (if they haven't then that zone letter will be reassigned to a new zone with no one the wiser). Typically they won't let you launch new things in that zone, so it's in your bet interest to move out of it, lest your resources get out of balance. Edit: Oh and old accounts can always see new zones as far as I know. They just show up as new letters. But it's rare that they add new zones -- usually they just make old zones bigger.

boulos 10y ago
Right. In some set of slides, James Hamilton has certainly said at least how many buildings there are for us-east-1 and it's a lot more than the up to four zones people see (IIRC, >26). Most customers will never notice the randomization of building => zone, but every once in a while you rely on a vendor like MongoLabs and its important you both are speaking about the same us-east1-b. The AWS folks let you tie yourself together in case you have multiple projects that need identical mappings.
- jedberg 10y ago
  Us-east actually has five zone, but one of them was decommissioned many years ago, so unless your account is very old, you can only see four. As far as I know, that's the only zone that's ever been fully decommissioned.