AWS DevOps: Routing Policy - Geolocation

Overview

• The Geolocation routing policy in AWS allows you to route your traffic based on the geographic location of your users.
• This method is distinct from Latency-based routing, as it focuses on the actual location rather than the latency to the service.
• You can specify routing policies for continents, countries, or even states within the U.S., with the most precise location being selected first.

Key Points

• Default Record: Creating a default record for scenarios without a match on the user's location is crucial. This ensures that your service remains accessible to users outside your specified regions.
• Use Cases: This routing policy is beneficial for:
  • Website localization
  • Content distribution restrictions
  • Load balancing

Implementation

• Health Checks: Geolocation records can be associated with health checks to ensure traffic is only directed to healthy endpoints.
• Example: For a Europe-based service, you can direct users from Germany to an endpoint serving content in German, from France to a French version, and all others to an English version by default.

Practice in the AWS Console

1. Creating a Geo Record:
   • Choose record type A.
   • Link to an EC2 instance in a specific region (e.g., ap-southeast-1 for Asia).
   • Specify the routing policy as geolocation, directing users from Asia to the ap-southeast-1 EC2 instance.
2. Adding Additional Records:
   • Create records for other regions (e.g., US-east-1 for the United States) and specify the geolocation accordingly (e.g., United States).
   • Ensure a default record is set (e.g., eu-central-1) for users in locations not explicitly matched.

Testing and Troubleshooting

• Testing the setup through various geographic locations (e.g., using a VPN) is essential to ensure proper routing based on geolocation.
• Common Issues: Timeouts can indicate problems unrelated to the routing policy, such as security group configurations. Ensuring proper inbound rules are in place is crucial for the functionality of your service.

Conclusion

• This lecture demonstrated the practical setup and testing of the Geolocation routing policy in AWS, highlighting its application in directing users to region-specific web application versions based on their geographic location.