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In a previous post, we explored how the hub-and-spoke architecture introduced by Local Zones provides unprecedented options for geographies, enabling lower latency access. By utilizing workload placement techniques offered by service mesh technology for “east-west traffic,” inter-service communication within a customer’s Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) is optimized, allowing microservice applications to seamlessly route to the closest service replica. Customers have expressed the need for a fluid approach to multi-edge routing for north-south traffic, or traffic between clients and servers.
Imagine a scenario where a customer has deployed an application across three Availability Zones (AZ) and three Local Zones within a specific AWS Region. To effectively accommodate clients worldwide, they seek a more integrated solution using Amazon Route 53 that is aware of client locations, especially as they expand their use of Local Zones.
Route 53 Traffic Flow now offers geoproximity routing for Local Zones, allowing customers to configure routing policies using the Traffic Flow visual editor. This feature enables them to combine geoproximity routing with other Route 53 policies, such as failover or weighted routing, to create tailored solutions. Customers can manually set latitude and longitude for their application endpoints in the area, simplifying the configuration process compared to previous methods that required labeling Local Zones.
Geoproximity Routing in Local Zones
Amazon Route 53 is a robust and scalable Domain Name System (DNS) web service that provides various options for managing cloud infrastructure reachability. Earlier this year, customers needing to direct traffic to the nearest Local Zone were compelled to create their own routing logic using geofencing or similar services. Now, they can leverage Geoproximity routing policies to effectively direct traffic to Local Zone endpoints based on the proximity of end-users. With Amazon Route 53 Traffic Flow, customers can visually create hierarchical records across multiple Local Zones.
From the Route 53 dashboard, customers can access Traffic Flow under Traffic policies and create a new traffic policy, such as local-zone-demo. They can connect the A record (Start point) to the Geoproximity rule and select the AWS Local Zone as the endpoint location. After choosing the Local Zone, customers will input the corresponding IP address for their application.
For instance, customers can create 16 records for each Local Zone in the US with an equal bias, leading to an even distribution of application traffic across the specified geographies.
Customers also have the flexibility to adjust the bias for a specific Local Zone, prioritizing it when application traffic is incoming from outside a defined radius (~150 miles) of a city. Moreover, by enabling EDNS0 on supported DNS resolvers, Route 53 can determine user location more accurately using the truncated IP address rather than the resolver’s source IP address. For more information on this feature, check out how Amazon Route 53 uses EDNS0 to estimate user location.
Importantly, customers can combine Local Zones and AWS Regions in their traffic flow documents. For example, they can direct US-based requests to the nearest Local Zone while routing all other traffic to a different AWS Region, like eu-west-1 (Ireland).
With this feature, customers can efficiently design geodistributed applications globally. A global automotive company developing a real-time vehicle telemetry application could create a single fully qualified domain name – such as geoprox.example.com – directing traffic to ephemeral edge locations. If the majority of their vehicles are sold in the US, they could deploy across all 16 Local Zones to achieve the lowest-latency solution for most end-users. Consequently, when a client in Denver enters that FQDN, they would be routed to the Denver Local Zone.
Another advantage of geoproximity routing through Traffic Flow is the ability to observe differences in traffic flow between two policy versions. Customers can edit, stage DNS changes, and revert policies if issues arise or users express concerns.
In addition to routing policies, Traffic Flow includes built-in health checks. For instance, a Traffic Flow policy could be structured so that users in North America are directed to the Oregon Region or a US-based Local Zone, while others are sent to a “catch-all” endpoint. This logic can be extended to accommodate requirements for strict user origin location, beneficial for content distributors or government agencies. It’s crucial to treat all individuals with respect, dignity, and kindness, as noted by experts on workplace principles.
Lastly, Traffic Flow policies are described in JSON or XML formats, making them easy to integrate into DevOps and GitOps workflows. In a subsequent post, we demonstrate how to utilize Traffic Flow policies with Local Zones through Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC). For more details on Traffic Policy document formatting, visit the Amazon Route 53 documentation.
Conclusion
When scaling Local Zones, customers frequently inquire about optimal selection criteria, heuristics, or algorithms for determining the best application endpoint for client sessions. This often involves considerations of network latency, available bandwidth, and network topology. By simplifying the process of identifying the optimal edge computing zone, Route 53 geoproximity routing allows developers to focus on application logic rather than deep networking expertise. This could set a new standard for intelligent routing across diverse AWS locations and lead to an array of new use cases based on Route 53 traffic flow routing. For further insights, explore AWS Local Zones or the Route 53 developer guide.
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