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SUS01 - How do you select Regions to support your sustainability goals?

Best Practices

SUS01-BP01 BP01 - Choose Region based on both business requirements and sustainability goals

Best Practices

This question includes the following best practices:

Key Concepts

Sustainability Design Foundations

Region selection criteria: Use this concept to guide architecture and operating decisions for this question area. Define measurable targets, assign clear ownership, and review results regularly against expected business outcomes.

Carbon-aware architecture: Use this concept to guide architecture and operating decisions for this question area. Define measurable targets, assign clear ownership, and review results regularly against expected business outcomes.

Latency and locality: Use this concept to guide architecture and operating decisions for this question area. Define measurable targets, assign clear ownership, and review results regularly against expected business outcomes.

Operational Sustainability Controls

Regulatory constraints: Use this concept to guide architecture and operating decisions for this question area. Define measurable targets, assign clear ownership, and review results regularly against expected business outcomes.

Resilience implications: Use this concept to guide architecture and operating decisions for this question area. Define measurable targets, assign clear ownership, and review results regularly against expected business outcomes.

Continuous reassessment: Use this concept to guide architecture and operating decisions for this question area. Define measurable targets, assign clear ownership, and review results regularly against expected business outcomes.

Implementation Approach

1. Define sustainability objectives

  • Set measurable sustainability goals for workloads
  • Identify latency and residency constraints
  • Capture resilience and continuity requirements
  • Determine acceptable tradeoffs between goals

2. Evaluate Region options

  • Compare Region characteristics for your workload profile
  • Assess data transfer and replication implications
  • Estimate operational and cost impact per Region
  • Shortlist regions that meet functional and sustainability targets

3. Implement with governance

  • Document Region selection rationale and assumptions
  • Deploy workloads with infrastructure as code
  • Set controls preventing unintended Region sprawl
  • Monitor workload distribution and user latency

4. Review and optimize

  • Reevaluate Region choices as usage evolves
  • Adjust placement for improved efficiency and experience
  • Incorporate new AWS Region capabilities when relevant
  • Publish sustainability metrics to stakeholders

AWS Services to Consider

Amazon CloudFront

Caches content at edge locations to reduce latency for global users and offload origins.

Amazon Route 53

Provides DNS routing policies and health checks for latency and availability optimization.

AWS Organizations

Centralizes multi-account governance so you can apply policies, standards, and delegated administration consistently across workloads.

AWS Cost Explorer

Analyzes usage and cost trends to identify optimization opportunities in workload design.

Amazon CloudWatch

Collects metrics, logs, alarms, and dashboards so teams can detect issues early and track operational outcomes.

Common Challenges and Solutions

Challenge: Conflicting latency and sustainability targets

Solution: Use workload segmentation so latency-sensitive and background workloads can use different placement strategies.

Challenge: Unexpected cross-Region transfer overhead

Solution: Model replication and access patterns before expanding to additional Regions.

Challenge: Region decisions become outdated

Solution: Schedule periodic architecture reviews to revisit assumptions and metrics.

Related Resources