What are AWS Availability Zones designed for?

AWS Availability Zones are specifically designed to provide high availability for applications. Each Availability Zone is a distinct location engineered to be isolated from failures in other Availability Zones, which means that if one zone encounters an issue, the others can continue operating normally. This architectural strategy allows businesses to deploy their applications across multiple zones, ensuring that they remain operational even in the face of unexpected failures or outages.

By distributing resources and applications across these zones, organizations can maintain seamless service and minimize downtime. This setup is crucial for mission-critical applications and services that require consistent performance and resilience.

In contrast, while backup storage solutions, virtual machines, and large datasets are important components of cloud computing, they are not the primary design intention behind Availability Zones. The core focus remains on high availability and fault tolerance, enabling businesses to deliver reliable services to their users.