AWS has announced the launch of an AWS Local Zone in Los Angeles (LA). AWS Local Zones place AWS compute, storage, database, and other select services closer to large population, industry, and IT centers. It would also give developers in LA the ability to deploy applications in the cloud that require single-digit millisecond latencies to end-users in Los Angeles.
AWS Local Zone customers will be able to use their compute, storage, database, and other select services locally in Los Angeles, while also being able to “seamlessly” connect back to the rest of their workloads running in the AWS US West (Oregon) Region, or other AWS Regions a customer may be using.
The AWS Local Zone in Los Angeles would particularly be interesting for LA-based media, entertainment, and advertising companies. Most of these companies’ applications would work fine in other public AWS Regions. However, for some of their more latency-sensitive workloads, end-users in Los Angeles would need single-digit millisecond latencies. For example, when it comes to use cases such as remote real-time gaming, film production, and graphics-intensive virtual workstations.
Customers can access the Los Angeles AWS Local Zone through the AWS Management Console and API. The first AWS Local Zone is available today in LA via the US West (Oregon) AWS Region, with additional AWS Local Zones coming soon.
Latency-Sensitive Workloads
Up until now, these latency-sensitive workloads required companies in Los Angeles to procure, operate, and maintain IT infrastructure in their own LA-based data center or colocation facility. And, they had to build and run these low latency application components with a different set of Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) and tools than the other parts of their applications running in the AWS Cloud. According to AWS, this resulted in a lot of extra effort and expense for these companies.
“Customers are excited about AWS Outposts because it gives them on-premises access to AWS compute, storage, and database with the same APIs, control plane, tools, and hardware as they get in AWS Regions,” said Peter DeSantis, Vice President, AWS Global Infrastructure. “But, for some of our customers, they either don’t have an on-premises data center or want to get rid of their local data center, but still have a need for some of their workloads to run locally given latency requirements. AWS Local Zones solve this problem for customers. They allow customers to avoid having local data centers, let them run the workloads in the Local Zone that needs to have single-digit latency to end-users locally, and make it easy for these workloads to seamlessly connect with the rest of their applications running in AWS Regions. LA is our first Local Zone, but we expect more will follow.”
Netflix, Luma Pictures
Netflix is the world’s leading streaming entertainment service with over 158 million paid memberships in over 190 countries enjoying TV series, documentaries, and feature films across a wide variety of genres and languages. “We are excited about the AWS Local Zone in Los Angeles.” said Nils Pommerien, Director, Cloud Infrastructure Engineering, Netflix. “It brings cloud resources close to creators and filmmakers and cuts down on latency between the artists and their workstations.”
Luma Pictures is a visual effects studio with facilities in Santa Monica and Melbourne founded in 2002 and best known for creatures, environments, and effects for the film industry. “With more than 200 artists worldwide, our teams depend on high connectivity and compute in order to handle our graphics- and video-heavy workloads,” said Chad Dombrova, Head of Software, VFX, Luma Pictures. “We’re looking forward to testing AWS’s new LA Local Zone because its latency-sensitive configurations such as direct mounting of on-premises storage and virtual workstations will help our teams deliver the explosive video effects we’re best known for.”
Starting today, customers using the AWS Local Zone in Los Angeles will be able to run various AWS services local to their LA-based end-users for applications that require single- digit millisecond latencies. These AWS services include: Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud, Amazon Virtual Private Cloud, Amazon Elastic Block Store, Amazon File Storage, and Amazon Elastic Load Balancing, with Amazon Relational Database Service support coming in a few months.
