Availability Zone

A distinct location within a region that is insulated from failures in other Availability Zones, and provides inexpensive, low-latency network connectivity to other Availability Zones in the same region.

An isolated location designated by Amazon to host clients’ EC2 usage. Amazon EC2 is hosted in multiple regions across the world and Availability Zones are a geographic subset under each region. Amazon encourages clients to host their instances in two or more Availability Zones to reduce the risk of losing instances.