How to Build AWS Dedicated Local Zones (DLZ) for On-Premise Cloud

Introduction

Amazon Web Services (AWS) has introduced Dedicated Local Zones, a new on-premise cloud solution. According to AWS re-invent, AWS Dedicated Local Zones are a kind of AWS infrastructure that is fully managed by AWS, constructed for exclusive use by you or your community, and deployed in a location or data centre designated by you to assist in complying with regulatory requirements. DLZs are managed by local AWS people and provide the same benefits as Local Zones, such as elasticity, scalability, and pay-as-you-go pricing, but with additional security and governance features.

According to AWS, the new service is aimed at customers who have sensitive data and applications that must run on physically separate infrastructure dedicated to their exclusive use and placed within a customer-specified regulatory jurisdiction to meet security and compliance requirements. Many clients run their own on-premises infrastructure for workloads that require isolation. This compromises the cloud’s performance, innovation, elasticity, scalability, and resilience.

AWS already provides on-premise equipment known as AWS Outposts, which were launched in 2018. According to Amazon, Dedicated Local Zones are intended to reduce the operational overhead of operating on-premises infrastructure.

According to AWS, users can deploy multiple Dedicated Local Zones for resiliency. EC2, Virtual Private Cloud (VPC), Elastic Block Store (EBS), Elastic Load Balancing (ELB), Elastic Container Service (ECS), Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS), and Direct Connect are among the services available. Customers can use deployments to run consistent AWS infrastructure, APIs, and tools across different types of applications running in AWS Regions and Dedicated Local Zones.

Use cases

1. Sensitive workload isolation:

You can collaborate with AWS to deploy cloud infrastructure that is fully managed by AWS, tailored for your specific needs, and located in the location or data centre of your choice to fulfill your needs.

2. Regulatory requirements:

AWS collaborates with you to set up your own private zones with increased security and governance features to help you satisfy regulatory requirements. 

3. Secure cloud infrastructure:

Benefit from the same AWS security requirements that apply to AWS Regions and AWS Local Zones, as well as the security of the AWS Nitro System, to help protect client data confidentiality and integrity.

4. Modernize applications:

Reduce operational costs and accelerate innovation with cloud infrastructure that enables elasticity, scalability, reliability, and multi-tenancy.

Customer Case Study

GOVTECH Singapore: Digitises Physical Government Payout to Save Money and Time on AWS

The Singapore Government’s Smart Nation and Digital Government Group (SNDGG) is the first customer to set up a Dedicated Local Zone.

GovTech’s Government Digital Services (GDS) team created and launched GovWallet entirely on the AWS Cloud, allowing the team to increase computing and storage capacity flexibly in response to the data demands of individual payout campaigns. The GDS team was able to execute up to 1.1 million disbursements and payments at the same time using AWS, with minimum lag and disruptions. In addition to virtually eliminating erroneous disbursements, a wholly digital payout procedure eliminates the need for agencies to mail cheques or paper vouchers, which can take up to 14 days to deliver.

They increased its database performance by 2,300x using Amazon DynamoDB, from a baseline of roughly nine writes per minute to over 21,000 writes per minute at launch. All disbursement and payment-facilitation processes were likewise automated using AWS Lambda and Amazon API Gateway. This enabled GovWallet to expand smoothly from approximately 125,000 invocations per week in a staging environment to more than 3.8 million invocations in the first week of launch.

References

https://aws.amazon.com/dedicatedlocalzones/

https://aws.amazon.com/solutions/case-studies/govtech-case-study/

https://reinvent.awslivestream.com/4-wps213-int/

https://www.infoq.com/news/2023/09/aws-dedicated-local-zones/

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