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If your application isn't real-time (like online gaming or multi-way voice/video), and you aren't making a bunch of requests serially from the client (very rare

If your application isn't real-time (like online gaming or multi-way voice/video), and you aren't making a bunch of requests serially from the client (very rare), I'm convinced you can serve the whole world with at most 2 datacenters - e.g. one in NYC and another in Singapore - coupled with a CDN to serve static assets. The notion that you need to replicate your infra in 10 regions in order to provide the best user experience sounds like propaganda pushed by cloud companies to make you use more product than you need.

tptacek 3y ago
It's usually just as straightforward to serve in NA and APAC as it is to serve in 10 different regions, and it's a very sane strategy --- I'm rolling out a Vault replacement inside Fly.io right now, which is in the hot path for booting VMs up anywhere, and my initial deployment strategy is just Sydney, Ashburn, and Frankfurt. So you're right, and the only nit I have is the idea that there's a conspiracy to get you to do lots of regions. I assume, like us, most cloud providers are equally psyched at the prospect of getting you up and running in 2 regions as they would be about 2 dozen. The one thing to keep in mind here is that the software architecture considerations of going to 1 to 2 regions cover about 95% of what it takes to go from 2 to 10. To a first approx., the hard part is being plural, not how plural you are.