A German insurer is told by its regulator that customer records must remain within the European Union. Four candidate Regions can all run every service the workload needs, and one of them is noticeably cheaper per instance-hour. Which consideration settles the choice of Region first?
AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner (CLF-C02), objective 3. Cloud technology and services medium
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The options
Correct Whether the Region sits inside the jurisdiction the records are required to stay in
Correct. Compliance is a hard constraint rather than a trade-off: a Region outside the EU is not a cheaper option, it is not an option. AWS keeps data in the Region you choose unless you explicitly move or replicate it, which is what makes Region choice the control here.
Not correct Which Region has the lowest price per instance-hour
Wrong as the first question, though prices really do differ between Regions and this matters once the shortlist is legal. Choosing on price first can produce a deployment that has to be rebuilt.
Not correct How many Availability Zones the Region has
Wrong as the deciding factor. Zone count shapes how you design for resilience, and it is worth checking, but a Region with more zones in the wrong jurisdiction still fails the regulator's test.
Not correct Whether the Region contains edge locations
Wrong, and it misunderstands the infrastructure. Edge locations belong to the global content delivery and DNS network; they are far more numerous than Regions and are not something you pick a Region for.
Why
Four factors decide a Region, and it is worth knowing them in this order: compliance and data governance (a hard constraint), proximity to the users or systems being served (latency), whether the Region offers the services the workload needs (not every service launches everywhere at once), and price (which varies by Region). The first is a filter; the other three are trade-offs among whatever survives it.
Where this comes from
- Cited
- AWS exam guide task statement 3.2
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