AWS Local Zones
- What it is
- An extension of an AWS Region placed in a large metro area far from the parent Region.
- Runs select services (EC2, EBS, ECS, load balancing) close to end users.
- Why
- Single-digit millisecond latency for latency-sensitive applications: real-time gaming, live video, media rendering, remote workstations.
- Also useful for data residency inside a specific city or state.
- How it connects
- Local Zone is a child of a parent Region; you extend a VPC subnet into it.
- Not to be confused with
- AWS Wavelength — inside a telecom provider’s 5G network, for mobile device latency. Local Zones sit in a metro data center on the regular internet.
- Edge Locations — CDN caching and DNS only, no general compute.
- AWS Outposts — AWS hardware in your own data center. Local Zones are AWS-owned facilities.