Yes, AWS Global Accelerator can be used with applications deployed in multiple AWS Regions. It is designed as a global service that supports endpoints across multiple regions, enabling improved availability, performance, and resiliency for multi-region applications.
Here are the detailed aspects of how AWS Global Accelerator works with multi-region applications:
- Multi-Region Endpoint Support: You can configure Global Accelerator to route traffic to application endpoints in one or more AWS Regions. These endpoints can be Application Load Balancers, Network Load Balancers, EC2 instances, or Elastic IP addresses registered in regional endpoint groups[2][6].
- Traffic Routing and Load Distribution: Global Accelerator provides static Anycast IP addresses as a single fixed entry point for your application, regardless of how many regions you deploy in. It routes user traffic to the closest healthy endpoint based on network latency and health checks. You can also control traffic distribution by setting traffic dial percentages per region, allowing you to implement active-active or active-standby multi-region architectures. In active-active, traffic is load-shared across multiple regions; in active-standby, traffic is routed to a primary region with failover to standby regions if needed[1][2][8].
- Health Checks and Failover: Global Accelerator continuously monitors the health of endpoints. If an endpoint or an entire region becomes unhealthy or unreachable, Global Accelerator automatically redirects traffic to the next optimal healthy endpoint in another region, enabling fast failover (typically less than one minute)[2][8].
- Simplified Management: With Global Accelerator, you manage a small set of static IP addresses rather than multiple IPs per region. You can add or remove regions, endpoints, or availability zones without impacting application availability. This simplifies DNS management and client configuration[5][6].
- Custom Routing Accelerators: For applications requiring custom routing logic, Global Accelerator supports custom routing accelerators that allow routing user traffic to specific EC2 IPs and ports in one or multiple regions, enabling more granular control over traffic distribution[4].
- Use Cases: This multi-region capability is beneficial for improving performance by serving users from the closest region, increasing application availability and disaster recovery, and scaling applications globally while maintaining consistent IP addresses for client access[1][10].
In summary, AWS Global Accelerator is well-suited for multi-region applications, providing global static IP addresses, intelligent traffic routing based on health and latency, configurable traffic distribution, and fast failover across multiple AWS Regions to enhance performance and availability.
Citations:
[1] https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/networking-and-content-delivery/deploying-multi-region-applications-in-aws-using-aws-global-accelerator/
[2] https://aws.amazon.com/global-accelerator/faqs/
[3] https://docs.aws.amazon.com/global-accelerator/latest/dg/preserve-client-ip-address.regions.html
[4] https://docs.aws.amazon.com/global-accelerator/latest/dg/what-is-global-accelerator.html
[5] https://www.hava.io/blog/what-is-aws-global-accelerator
[6] https://docs.aws.amazon.com/global-accelerator/latest/dg/introduction-get-started.html
[7] https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonS3/latest/userguide/MultiRegionAccessPoints.html
[8] https://repost.aws/questions/QUo8q_KZ2fTz2PjaiJc9ztEQ/using-aws-global-accelerator-service-to-distribute-traffic-across-multiple-regions
[9] https://www.reddit.com/r/aws/comments/z1vazp/global_accelerator_routing_to_another_accounts_alb/
[10] https://docs.aws.amazon.com/global-accelerator/latest/dg/introduction-benefits-of-migrating.html