AWS global infrastructure (regions, AZs) - Mini Project: Build & Apply

AWS Global Infrastructure: Regions and Availability Zones

📖 Scenario: You are working as a cloud architect for a company that wants to understand how AWS organizes its data centers worldwide. AWS uses Regions and Availability Zones (AZs) to provide reliable and scalable cloud services.Regions are separate geographic areas, and each Region contains multiple AZs, which are isolated locations within that Region. This setup helps keep applications running even if one AZ has a problem.

🎯 Goal: You will create a simple data structure to represent AWS Regions and their Availability Zones. Then, you will add a configuration variable to select a specific Region. Next, you will write code to list all AZs in the selected Region. Finally, you will complete the setup by adding a summary count of AZs in that Region.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a dictionary named aws_infrastructure with exactly these Regions and AZs:

us-east-1: ['us-east-1a', 'us-east-1b', 'us-east-1c']

eu-west-1: ['eu-west-1a', 'eu-west-1b']

ap-southeast-1: ['ap-southeast-1a', 'ap-southeast-1b', 'ap-southeast-1c']

Create a variable selected_region set to 'us-east-1'

Write a loop to create a list az_list containing all AZs in selected_region

Add a variable az_count that stores the number of AZs in selected_region

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Understanding AWS Regions and AZs helps design cloud applications that are reliable and available even if one data center fails.

💼 Career

Cloud architects and engineers must know AWS global infrastructure to plan deployments and disaster recovery strategies.

1

Create AWS Regions and Availability Zones dictionary

Create a dictionary called aws_infrastructure with these exact entries: 'us-east-1' mapped to ['us-east-1a', 'us-east-1b', 'us-east-1c'], 'eu-west-1' mapped to ['eu-west-1a', 'eu-west-1b'], and 'ap-southeast-1' mapped to ['ap-southeast-1a', 'ap-southeast-1b', 'ap-southeast-1c'].

AWS

# Create aws_infrastructure dictionary with Regions and AZs
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use curly braces {} to create a dictionary. Each Region is a key with a list of AZ strings as its value.

2

Select a Region to work with

Create a variable called selected_region and set it exactly to the string 'us-east-1'.

AWS

aws_infrastructure = {
    'us-east-1': ['us-east-1a', 'us-east-1b', 'us-east-1c'],
    'eu-west-1': ['eu-west-1a', 'eu-west-1b'],
    'ap-southeast-1': ['ap-southeast-1a', 'ap-southeast-1b', 'ap-southeast-1c']
}
# Set selected_region to 'us-east-1'
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Assign the string 'us-east-1' to the variable selected_region.

3

List all Availability Zones in the selected Region

Create a list called az_list that contains all Availability Zones from aws_infrastructure[selected_region] using a for loop with the variable az.

AWS

aws_infrastructure = {
    'us-east-1': ['us-east-1a', 'us-east-1b', 'us-east-1c'],
    'eu-west-1': ['eu-west-1a', 'eu-west-1b'],
    'ap-southeast-1': ['ap-southeast-1a', 'ap-southeast-1b', 'ap-southeast-1c']
}

selected_region = 'us-east-1'

# Create az_list by looping over aws_infrastructure[selected_region]
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Start with an empty list az_list. Use a for loop with az to add each AZ from the selected Region.

4

Count the number of Availability Zones in the selected Region

Create a variable called az_count and set it to the length of az_list using the len() function.

AWS

aws_infrastructure = {
    'us-east-1': ['us-east-1a', 'us-east-1b', 'us-east-1c'],
    'eu-west-1': ['eu-west-1a', 'eu-west-1b'],
    'ap-southeast-1': ['ap-southeast-1a', 'ap-southeast-1b', 'ap-southeast-1c']
}

selected_region = 'us-east-1'

az_list = []
for az in aws_infrastructure[selected_region]:
    az_list.append(az)

# Set az_count to the number of AZs in az_list
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use len(az_list) to get the number of AZs and assign it to az_count.