Running reliable applications at scale starts with understanding how your cloud provider structures its infrastructure. With Google Cloud now the third-largest cloud provider, it supports 42 regions and 127 availability zones globally.
Your deployment strategy directly influences application performance, resilience, and compliance across this global footprint. Yet many teams still overlook location strategy, which can lead to latency issues, downtime risks, and inefficient resource placement.
In this guide, we’ll break down how Google Cloud infrastructure is organized, the differences between regions and zones, available types, and best practices for deploying workloads effectively.
Understanding Google Cloud’s Infrastructure
Google Cloud’s infrastructure consists of a wide range of services, applications, and AI-driven resources, all built on a globally distributed network of data centers. This infrastructure is organized into regions, which are independent geographic areas, and zones, which are isolated locations within those regions.
Below, we break down the core concepts behind regions and zones, how they function, and how businesses can use them to support global operations.
Regions
In Google Cloud, a region is an independent geographic area that hosts cloud resources and services. Each region is made up of multiple zones, allowing workloads to be deployed across physically separated locations within the same area.
For example:
- Belgium = “europe-west1”
- Netherlands = “europe-west4”
- Paris = “europe-west9”
- Montréal = “northamerica-northeast1”
- Jakarta = “asia-southeast2”
- Columbus = “us-east5
Today, Google Cloud operates 42 of these regions worldwide. Each region provides low-latency, high-bandwidth connections between its zones. By deploying workloads across multiple regions, organizations can improve fault tolerance and ensure continuity in case of localized failures or outages. If one region faces an outage, another region can continue operations, minimizing downtime and ensuring continuity.
Zones
A zone in Google Cloud is a deployment area within a region, typically representing a single data center or a cluster of closely connected data centers. They are designed to operate independently from one another within the same region, allowing workloads to be distributed for improved resilience and availability. Zones within a region are connected by high-bandwidth, low-latency links, enabling fast and reliable data transfer between them.
Each zone within a region is identified by a fully qualified zone name, which follows a structured format to help users identify and locate zones easily. The fully qualified zone name includes the region identifier followed by a zone letter.
- Changhua County, Taiwan = “asia-east1-a”
- Hamina, Finland = “europe-north1-a”
- Madrid, Spain = “europe-southwest1-a”
- Osasco, São Paulo = “southamerica-east1-a”
- Frankfurt, Germany = “europe-west3-a”
- Milan, Italy = “europe-west8-a”
Distributing resources across multiple zones within a region improves redundancy by providing backup capacity. In case of a failure or disruption in one zone (like power outages, hardware failure, or network congestion), other zones within the region can take over the load without impacting the availability of services. This ensures higher reliability and minimizes the risk of service interruption.
Benefits of Google Cloud’s Global Infrastructure
Google Cloud offers a scalable and highly reliable global cloud infrastructure, which provides businesses with the following benefits:
Secure data centers
Google Cloud’s world-class data centers provide businesses with the highest level of performance, supported by Google Cloud’s strict security protocols.
Featuring advanced cooling and power distribution, multi-layer security protections, and built-in redundancy, Google Cloud’s data centers let businesses scale their cloud operations without compromising on security or reliability.
This is beneficial for businesses because it ensures that cloud resources are secure, reliable, and optimized for performance, all while maintaining sustainability and reducing the risk of disruptions due to security breaches.
High-speed, dependable global network
Google Cloud operates a private, high-performance fiber-optic network with 202 edge locations worldwide. These edge locations serve as content delivery network (CDN) endpoints and points of presence (PoPs), reducing latency and improving response times for users across the globe.
This extensive infrastructure enables fast, secure data transmission between regions, zones, and end users. By strategically placing workloads and services closer to users at the edge, businesses can support latency-sensitive applications, improve availability, and deliver consistent performance regardless of location.
Comprehensive security layers
Google Cloud leverages industry-leading security across all its data centers. This includes six progressive layers of physical security, ranging from perimeter fencing and 24/7 guard patrols to biometric access controls and secure media disposal.
Google Cloud also provides multiple digital security protections, including DDoS protection, identity and access management (IAM) solutions, real-time cloud monitoring, and emergency backup generators in the event of service disruptions.
These comprehensive security measures protect businesses against cyber threats, unauthorized access, and potential service disruptions.
Built for maximum uptime and resilience
Google Cloud provides multi-regional deployment options and automated failover mechanisms to help businesses maximize their uptime and resource resilience.
During network disruptions, Google Cloud Load Balancing automatically reroutes traffic to other regions to minimize service impact. Google Cloud’s Storage for example can employ data replication and recovery mechanisms, significantly reducing the risk of critical data loss during network failures.
This is beneficial for businesses because it ensures that critical applications and services remain operational even during disruptions, minimizing downtime and preventing data loss so that businesses can continue running smoothly and without interruption.
Types of Google Cloud Resources and Their Availability
Google Cloud resources refer to the core services and components that users deploy and manage within their cloud environments. These include compute instances, storage buckets, databases, networking components, and other managed services used to build and run applications. Google distributes these resources across its global network of regions and zones to support scalability, performance, and fault tolerance.
Note: The referenced documentation primarily covers Compute Engine resources. Availability models for other Google Cloud services may vary.
Below is a breakdown of the key resource types and how their availability may be restricted based on location.
Zonal resources
Zonal resources are unique to the zone they’re used in. Instances can access additional resources within the same zone, but can’t access adjacent resource types in other zones or regions.
- Compute engine instances (VMs): Virtual machines that can only communicate with global (multiregional resources) or those within their own zone
- Persistent disks and hyperdisks: Block storage attached to instances within the same zone that are shareable between VMs
- Machine types: Specific hardware configurations usable only by instances and disks within the same zone
- GPUs: Graphics Processing Units with variable zone availability
- Cloud TPUs: Tensor Processing Units with variable zone availability
Regional resources
Regional resources are accessible to all resource types within the same region. Google Cloud’s available regional resources include:
- Addresses: Static external IP addresses assignable to instances with the same region or used by regional load balancers
- Cloud interconnect attachments: VLAN attachments that identify which VPC networks connect to on-premise networks through a Dedicated Interconnect
- Placement policies: Dictates the positioning of VMs within a region to reduce network latency
- Regional instance templates: Used to create VM instances, managed instance groups, or reservations within a region
- Regional managed instance groups: Collection of duplicate instances spread across different zones within a region
- Regional persistent disks: Provides durable storage and multi-zone synchronous data replication to help manage failover situations
- Subnets: Segments regional network IPs and establishes IP ranges for all instances
Multiregional resources
Multiregional resources managed by Google Cloud are accessible across all zones and regions without restriction. These resource types include:
- Images: Single images used to create new virtual machine in any region within a Google Cloud project
- Snapshots: Persistent disk snapshots that can replicate a new disk in other regions
- Cloud Interconnect and Locations: High-availability connections and physical connection points between Google Cloud and on-premise business networks
- VPC Network: Globally accessible Virtual Private Cloud network to create an isolated networked location within Google Cloud
- Firewalls: Controls incoming and outgoing network traffic with a VPC network, regardless of region location
Key Considerations for Choosing Google Cloud Regions
Below are some of the critical factors businesses should evaluate before determining which regions they use:
Performance and latency considerations
Proximity is a critical factor when trying to improve application response time for cloud users. The longer the distance data needs to travel between data centers and end users, the higher the latency and the slower the performance.
By choosing regional locations closer to their target users, businesses effectively reduce inter-region latency and reduce the time it takes for data to transmit.
Cost considerations
Google Cloud regional costs vary between locations due to fluctuations in local resource demand and infrastructure expenses.
Google Cloud Pricing Calculator is a free tool businesses can use to compare compute, storage, and networking costs across different regions. This helps to balance the availability and performance capabilities of each region with business budgets.
Compliance and data sovereignty
Regulations like the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) impose strict requirements on where and how businesses store their cloud data. Google Cloud provides the flexibility to choose specific regions for data residency and control how it’s processed, helping them to meet these obligations.
High availability and disaster recovery
Selecting the right Google Cloud regions and zones directly impacts the availability of services and the ability to recover successfully after a major disruption.
Provisioning resources across multiple zones within a region lets businesses leverage Google Cloud’s automatic failover capabilities. These dynamic resource distribution automations keep applications running smoothly even if one zone fails.
Additionally, services like Cloud Storage simplify setting up cross-region data replication, enabling faster and more accurate data recovery when needed.
Best Practices for Choosing the Right Google Cloud Region/Zone
Choosing the right combination of Google Cloud regions and zones can help you maximize cloud performance, cost-efficiency, and reliability. Here are some best practices to help guide you through the process:
1. Assess user locations
The closer your infrastructure is to your users, the lower the network latency, which leads to faster load times and a better overall experience. For example, if most of your users are located in Europe, it would be beneficial to choose a region like europe-west1 (Belgium) or europe-west4 (Netherlands).
This strategic placement helps minimize network latency and improves the responsiveness of your applications.
2. Evaluate cost differences
Once you have a shortlist of preferred regions and zones, use the Google Cloud Pricing Calculator to compare their associated costs. Google Cloud’s pricing can vary significantly from one region to another. While some regions offer better performance, others may come with a more budget-friendly price tag.
Using Google Cloud’s Pricing Calculator, you can plug in your projected usage and see how much you’d pay in different regions. It’s important to consider these differences in both upfront costs and long-term savings. Additionally, remember to factor in network egress and data transfer costs, as these can add up depending on the locations involved.
3. Plan for resilience
Resilience should be a core part of your cloud architecture. To minimize service disruptions, deploy critical workloads across multiple zones within a region or across different regions entirely.
Use managed instance groups with autoscaling, set up load balancing across zones, and configure Cloud Storage with dual-region or multi-region buckets when needed. This ensures your services remain available even if a zone or region becomes unavailable. Regularly test failover scenarios to validate your setup and reduce recovery time.
4. Consider compliance
Verify that your chosen Google Cloud regions meet your business’s compliance obligations before finalizing your selection. Local regulations often dictate specific data residency and processing requirements for businesses, so your region choice should reflect these standards.
For example, to simplify compliance with GDPR requirements, you could use Google Cloud regions located exclusively within the EU. It’s important to also look for region locations that provide services like Assured Workloads, which can provide you with additional controls and certifications to support your compliance efforts.
Optimize Your Google Cloud Costs With ProsperOps
Google Cloud provides businesses with access to a high-performance, scalable infrastructure built on a global network of regions and zones. By carefully considering factors like user locations, regional pricing, and data residency requirements, you can design a cloud strategy that supports your business’s current and future needs.
However, while maximizing the value of your cloud investments is essential, it can also require a lot of regular manual effort. That’s where ProsperOps can help.
ProsperOps offers a dynamic approach to managing Google Cloud costs through autonomous discount instrument management. ADM optimizes for Committed Use Discounts (CUDs) and is powered by our proven Adaptive Laddering methodology. We automatically purchase spend-based CUDs in small, incremental “rungs” over time, rather than a single, batched commitment to maximize your Effective Savings Rate (ESR) and reduce Commitment Lock-In Risk (CLR).
By removing the effort, latency, and financial risk associated with manually managing rigid, long-term discount instruments, ProsperOps simplifies cloud financial management.
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