GCP Global Infrastructure (Regions, Zones, Network)

GCP's infrastructure is designed for high availability, low latency, and global reach. Understanding how regions, zones, and Google's network work is essential for architecting reliable applications.

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Regions and Zones

Regions

A region is an independent geographic area where GCP resources are hosted. Each region is designed to be isolated from failures in other regions.

Examples:

Region Code	Location
europe-west2	London, UK
us-central1	Iowa, USA
asia-east1	Taiwan
australia-southeast1	Sydney, Australia
me-central1	Doha, Qatar

GCP operates 40+ regions across the Americas, Europe, Asia-Pacific, and the Middle East.

Zones

Each region contains three or more zones. A zone is a deployment area within a region — think of it as one or more data centres with independent power, cooling, and networking.

Region: europe-west2 (London)
  |
  |-- Zone: europe-west2-a
  |-- Zone: europe-west2-b
  |-- Zone: europe-west2-c

Key facts: