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Don't just learn the cloud—BYTE it!
Byte the Cloud is your go-to, on-the-go, podcast for mastering AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud certifications and exam prep!
Chris 0:00
All right, let's jump right in. Yeah, sounds good. Today's deep dive, AWS global accelerator,
Kelly 0:04
we're going deep.
Chris 0:06
We're going deep.
Kelly 0:06
This is for you cloud engineers out there. You already know the basics, but you're ready for more. Yeah, you're ready to get that edge, especially if you're prepping for that solutions, Architect Associate exam, absolutely.
Chris 0:17
We're talking about getting that absolute top performance for your applications,
Kelly 0:21
especially when you've got users all over the
Chris 0:25
globe, all over the world. Yeah, reduced latency, improved availability,
Kelly 0:29
better user experience. That's what we're after.
Chris 0:31
So let's, let's start with the basics here. What is this thing? What is AWS global accelerator? Why should we care?
Kelly 0:39
Okay, so at its core, AWS global accelerator is a service that's designed to make your applications perform better for users all over the planet. It does this by using the power of the AWS global network infrastructure.
Chris 0:53
Okay, so I'm intrigued, but we're cloud engineers, we need a little more than just a description, right? Give me a real world example here.
Kelly 1:01
Okay, imagine you're a gaming company. You've got players in Europe, Asia, North America, and every millisecond counts, right? You want that game to be responsive? Oh, yeah. Global accelerator can help you reduce lag for those players by routing their traffic over AWS own super fast network. Okay, so it's bypassing that messy, congested public internet. So instead
Chris 1:24
of taking the scenic route, our data is getting the Fast Pass on the AWS global network like the express lane, exactly.
Kelly 1:31
That's a great way to put it, and what that means is faster load times less jitter, a smoother gaming experience for your users, no matter where they are.
Chris 1:39
Okay, I like it. So how does it do all this? What are the key features here? Okay, let's
Kelly 1:44
break it down. First up, global accelerator gives you static it addresses for your applications. This makes managing your DNS so much easier, and it ensures that your users are always being sent to the best endpoint. Okay,
Chris 1:55
so no more messing around with all those DNS settings every time we make a little change,
Kelly 1:59
exactly, it simplifies things a lot. Secondly, global accelerator uses health checks, so it's constantly monitoring the health of your application endpoints. And these endpoints could be your EC2 instances, your load balancers, whatever you've got set up.
Chris 2:13
Okay, so it's like a doctor for our applications, constantly making sure everything's okay, taking the pulse. I
Kelly 2:18
like that analogy. Okay, that's perfect. And the best part is it only sends traffic to the healthy endpoints, so if something goes down, traffic gets automatically rerouted to a healthy endpoint, and your users don't even notice a thing like a
Chris 2:31
safety net, exactly, okay. So we've got static IPs for easy management. We've got health checks for resilience, anything else. What else can it do? Well, one
Kelly 2:41
of the big benefits is the potential for a massive reduction in latency. I'm talking up to 75% faster in some cases. Wow. This is a game changer for the user experience, especially for those applications where real time interactions are key.
Chris 2:53
That's a big deal. 75% no more complaints about slow lowing times Exactly.
Kelly 2:57
And remember, we talked about that improved availability? Well, it goes beyond just handling individual endpoint failures. Global accelerator can actually spread your traffic across multiple AWS regions. So even if a whole region has an outage, your application can stay up and running, okay, so like a global safety net, yeah, think of it that way, okay? And the best part is all of this fits perfectly into the AWS ecosystem. Global accelerator works seamlessly with services like elastic load balancers, CloudFront Route 53
Chris 3:29
Wait, wait, hold on. I know those. You know those, but maybe not all of our listeners are so familiar with all of those services. Can we quickly explain those just so everyone's on
Kelly 3:37
the same page? Sure. Elastic load balancers, they distribute traffic across multiple servers or containers, so no single resource gets overloaded. CloudFront, that's your content delivery network that caches your content, your stack content, closer to your users around the world, okay, speeds things up, gotcha. And then Route 53 that's AWS, is super scalable and reliable DNS service, okay? So
Chris 4:01
it's like global accelerator is the conductor of the orchestra. Yeah, that's a good way to think about it, working with all these services together to
Kelly 4:07
optimize absolutely a real team player. Okay,
Chris 4:10
it sounds incredibly powerful, but I know in technology, there's no silver bullets. What are the downsides? When is global accelerator not the right choice.
Kelly 4:21
You're right. It's not a magic solution for every single situation. One key thing to remember is that it works best with TCP and UDP traffic.
Chris 4:31
Okay, so if we have an application that's using other protocols, it might not be the best fit.
Kelly 4:36
That's right, and it's fantastic for improving the performance of your existing applications, okay, but it's not gonna magically fix bad code. You still need to make sure that your application is well designed, it's efficient. You gotta write good code. You gotta write good code. It's a powerful tool, but you need to understand its strengths and limitations before you jump in.
Chris 4:55
Okay, so I think we've laid a good foundation here. Yeah, I think so we've. Got the basics. What global accelerator is why it's important, some of its key features, benefits, even limitations, the pros and cons. But I know our listeners are eager to see how this actually works in the real world. You know? Yeah, I know they are, especially when it comes to those exam questions, right? Yeah.
Kelly 5:16
Let's put this knowledge to the test. All right, let's
Chris 5:18
dive into some exam prep then,
Kelly 5:20
okay, imagine this. You are designing a multi region application. You need to ensure high availability and low latency for users all over the world.
Chris 5:30
Sounds familiar, yeah. Did we just talk about something that sounds exactly like that? You're catching on quick, yeah.
Kelly 5:36
This is where global accelerator really shines. It's designed to distribute your traffic across multiple regions, minimize latency through its global network infrastructure. Perfect fit.
Chris 5:48
Okay, so that one's pretty straightforward. I have a feeling the exam is not always going to be that easy on us. What about a situation where we're already using global accelerator? We need to understand how it's actually making decisions about routing traffic, excellent
Kelly 6:02
point. So let's say you are using global accelerator to improve the performance of your web app. How does global accelerator figure out where to send that traffic,
Chris 6:13
which end point to use? Now this is where those health checks come into play, right? You nailed
Kelly 6:18
it. It's constantly monitoring the health of your endpoints, your servers, load balancers, whatever you've got hooked up to it. It's only sending traffic to the healthy ones, and this ensures a smooth experience for your users, even if some of your endpoints might be having a little trouble. Okay?
Chris 6:34
So it's dynamic. It's adapting to the conditions real time. Okay? And what about, you know, I think this can be kind of a confusing topic. What about a question that's like, all right, how do we differentiate between network load balancer and NLB and global accelerator? Okay, yeah, when do we use one? When do we use the other? So
Kelly 6:51
there are definitely some similarities there, but the big difference is in their scope, nlbs operate at a regional level. They're distributing traffic within a single AWS region. Global accelerator works globally across different regions.
Chris 7:05
Okay. So if my application is just serving users in one region, NLB might be enough, exactly,
Kelly 7:10
but if you need that low latency and high availability for users that are scattered all over the globe, global accelerator is the way to go. Okay,
Chris 7:19
so it depends on the needs. Always depends on your specific needs of the application and
Kelly 7:25
users, absolutely, and understanding those little differences is so important, not just for designing efficient cloud architectures, but also for acing those AWS certification exams. Okay,
Chris 7:35
well, I think we've covered a lot in this first part of our deep dive. Yeah, I think we have into global accelerator. We went from that basic definition why it matters to a closer look at its key features, its benefits and some of those limitations, the good and the bad, and we tackled a few of those exam style questions to get you thinking strategically about global accelerator and how it might show up on that exam. Yeah, definitely. There's still more, right? Oh, there's always more. In the next part of our deep dive, we'll be getting into more advanced concepts, things like weighted routing security considerations, oh, yeah,
Kelly 8:09
and how global accelerator plays with other AWS services like CloudFront. Sounds like
Chris 8:15
we're just getting started. We are. Stay tuned. I can't wait. See you next time.
Kelly 8:19
See you in Part Two. Welcome back. Okay, so
Chris 8:21
earlier we touched upon global accelerators, ability to work with elastic load balancers. Yeah, can we dig into that a bit more sure? I'm curious how they kind of fit together, how they complement each other Absolutely.
Kelly 8:33
So remember how we talked about global accelerator being awesome at distributing traffic across different regions? Yeah. Well, within each region, you might have multiple servers or containers that are actually doing the work right, and that's where elastic load balancers come in. Exactly. You can use an elastic load balancer, like an application load balancer, okay, to distribute that incoming traffic across those servers within the region, okay? And then global accelerator takes care of getting the traffic to the right load balancer in the best performing region.
Chris 9:03
So it's like a two tiered system, global accelerators handling the global rating and elastic load balancers are managing that regional distribution Exactly.
Kelly 9:12
And this allows you to create a really scalable and resilient architecture where traffic is efficiently distributed, both globally and regionally.
Chris 9:21
That makes perfect sense. So it's like, I don't know a Global Traffic Director working with regional traffic managers. Yeah,
Kelly 9:28
that's a great analogy. Now, you
Chris 9:29
mentioned earlier this thing weighted routing, yeah, is that a way to, like, fine tune how traffic is distributed? It
Kelly 9:36
is. So with weighted routing, you can assign different weights to the different endpoints that are associated with your global accelerator, and this gives you really granular control over how that traffic is directed.
Chris 9:49
So for example, I've got two endpoints, one in North America, one in Europe, right? I could set up weighted routing to send like, 80% of the traffic to North America and 20% to Europe Exactly.
Kelly 9:58
So this could be useful. If you've got a primary region where most of your users are, but you still want to maintain a presence in other regions for redundancy or to minimize latency for a smaller group of users, okay,
Chris 10:12
that makes sense. But what if my traffic patterns change over time? Yeah, can I adjust those weights on the fly?
Kelly 10:18
Absolutely. You can modify the weights associated with your endpoints at any time, and you can do it without disrupting traffic. Okay? So you can dynamically adapt to changes in user distribution or your application requirements.
Chris 10:32
So it's like a real time traffic control system, exactly. That's pretty cool. And
Kelly 10:36
you know, weighted routing can be used for more than just geographic distribution. You can also use it for things like Canary deployments.
Chris 10:43
Canary deployments remind me what that is again. So
Kelly 10:45
Canary deployment is a technique where you roll out a new version of your application to a small percentage of users before you release it to everybody. Okay. So this lets you test the new version in a live environment, see if there are any issues before you impact a wider audience. Gotcha. So
Chris 11:01
with weighted routing, I could send, say, 5% of my traffic to the Canary endpoint, and 95% to the stable version, exactly. And then, you know, if everything looks good, I can slowly ramp up the traffic to the Canary as I get more comfortable Exactly.
Kelly 11:14
It gives you that flexibility, okay to experiment, roll out changes gradually, without the risk of causing widespread disruption.
Chris 11:23
All right, weighted routing, I'm adding that to my toolkit. Good. Let's shift gears a little bit here and talk about security. How does global accelerator keep our data safe? Yeah,
Kelly 11:33
this is critical, especially when you're dealing with sensitive information. Absolutely. Global accelerator integrates really well with AWS identity and access management I am you can define very granular access control policies. You can control who can create, modify, delete, global accelerator resources. The
Chris 11:54
same level of granular control that we have with other AWS services, exactly, and
Kelly 11:58
that makes sure that only authorized personnel have the right permissions,
Chris 12:02
okay, but what about the data in transit? Yeah. Is it encrypted? Yes,
Kelly 12:05
global accelerator enforces end to end encryption, okay, for all traffic passing through its network. So even if someone were to intercept that data, they wouldn't be able to decrypt it without the
Chris 12:16
keys. So it sounds like security is baked into global accelerator. It
Kelly 12:19
is, and it's essential, especially for those applications handling sensitive data like financial transactions, personal information.
Chris 12:26
You mentioned earlier that global accelerator works well with CloudFront, yeah. How do they work together? How do they enhance performance? So
Kelly 12:32
you can use Global accelerator with CloudFront to really optimize the performance of your applications, especially those that serve both static and dynamic content. Now
Chris 12:42
I thought CloudFront already has a global network of Edge locations. It does. So how does adding global accelerator make it even better? That's
Kelly 12:50
a great question. So while CloudFront is really good at caching and delivering static content from those Edge locations all over the world, it still needs to get that content from your origin servers, which might be in a specific AWS region, okay,
Chris 13:04
so there's still a potential bottleneck between those cloud front edge locations and my origin servers. Exactly. That's
Kelly 13:10
where global accelerator steps in. So by using global accelerator to optimize the connection between your users and those cloud front edge locations, you can reduce the latency for those initial requests, okay?
Chris 13:22
So it's like it's adding an extra layer of optimization exactly on top of that global network that CloudFront already provides. Think
Kelly 13:29
of it this way, okay, CloudFront is like having a network of distribution centers around the world, and global accelerator is like that high speed delivery system, okay, I like that that connects your factory to those distribution centers. That makes sense. Now, remember how we were talking about how global accelerator can handle traffic from clients that are behind firewalls or net devices? Yeah, this
Chris 13:50
is a pretty common scenario, very common, especially in corporate environments, and
Kelly 13:54
the exam might ask you about this, how global accelerator handles this. And the key here is understanding endpoint groups. Endpoint groups, okay, break that down for me. So an endpoint group is a collection of IP addresses or endpoints that represent your application. And when you create a global accelerator, you associate it with one or more of these endpoint
Chris 14:13
groups. Okay. So how does this help with those clients behind firewalls? Okay,
Kelly 14:17
so here's the magic global accelerator, static IP addresses are associated with these endpoint groups. So when a client sends a request to your global accelerator, it's actually being directed to one of these static IPs. And because that static IP is associated with the endpoint group, global accelerator knows where to route that traffic, even if the client's original IP address has been masked by a NAT
Chris 14:42
device, so it's like you can see through the firewall. It's a
Kelly 14:45
clever way to make sure that clients behind firewalls or nats can still benefit from all those performance enhancements that global accelerator offers.
Chris 14:54
Okay, that's pretty impressive. It's pretty cool, like global Accelerator has this intelligence built in that. Can just navigate all those complexities of network security, right, and still deliver that performance.
Kelly 15:06
It's a very powerful service.
Chris 15:07
This deep dive is really opening my eyes to global accelerator. Yeah, it's a lot more than I think I initially realized. There's a lot to it. Let's keep going. I'm ready for the next part. All right. What else have you got for me? Okay, let's
Kelly 15:18
talk about something that you're definitely going to see on the AWS exams, and that is elasticity. Ah,
Chris 15:23
elasticity, the magic of the cloud, right? Scale up, scale down as needed, exactly.
Kelly 15:28
And global accelerator plays a big part in making your applications truly elastic.
Chris 15:34
Okay, I can see how it helps with scalability by distributing that traffic efficiently, Yeah, but how does it specifically relate to elasticity?
Kelly 15:43
So imagine this, you're running a big promotional campaign, okay, and suddenly you've got this massive spike in traffic hitting your app. Yeah,
Chris 15:51
those marketing campaigns can really sneak up on you. Oh, yeah. And suddenly you're scrambling,
Kelly 15:56
right? And without global accelerator, you might have to manually provision more servers, maybe more load balancers in different regions just to handle all that extra traffic. It's time consuming. Yeah, it's a headache. It's pain. But with a global accelerator, it's different. It's a whole different story, because it's already routing that traffic globally. It's constantly checking the health of your endpoints. It can absorb those traffic spikes without you having to do anything. So it's like,
Chris 16:22
I don't know an automatic transmission for our infrastructure. I like that. Yeah, it just shifts gears smoothly, keeps everything running smoothly, even when things change really fast. That's
Kelly 16:31
a great analogy. And you know, this ties into another really important concept in cloud architecture, and that is cost optimization.
Chris 16:39
Ah, yes, trying to keep those cloud bills in check, always a
Kelly 16:43
good idea. And global accelerator can actually help you save money. So because it's making your traffic routing so efficient, you might be able to use smaller EC2 instances. You might be able to use fewer load balancers, because global accelerator is doing so much
Chris 16:58
of that heady lifting. So not just performance. It's also cost effective. It is, and this is
Kelly 17:03
something that might come up on the exam. You want to be prepared to explain how global accelerator can contribute to cost savings.
Chris 17:10
Okay, good to know. So let's say I'm using global accelerator and I need to make a change to the configuration, maybe add a new endpoint group, or change some routing policies. How disruptive is that? Can I do it without taking my application offline? This
Kelly 17:24
is a really good question, because it highlights the operational side of global accelerator, which often gets overlooked. And the good news is that you can actually modify a lot of the global accelerator configurations without any interruption to traffic.
Chris 17:36
Okay, so we can tweak things on the fly as our needs change exactly,
Kelly 17:41
and the key is understanding the difference between what we call immutable and mutable properties. Okay, immutable properties, like the IP address ranges associated with an accelerator, those can't be changed once the accelerator is created. Those are set in stone. They are but mutable properties, things like endpoint weights, your health check settings, routing policies, all that can be modified without causing any downtime. Okay,
Chris 18:05
so it's knowing which levers we can pull without bringing the whole system down exactly.
Kelly 18:10
And this flexibility is another reason why global accelerator is such a valuable tool. Okay, before we wrap up, are you ready for one final exam style question, dude, hit me All right. So imagine you're tasked with improving the performance of a real time video streaming application. How would you use Global accelerator to do that? Okay, so
Chris 18:31
even though it's video streaming, those core principles, that low latency, that high availability, they still apply right?
Kelly 18:38
Absolutely so by using global accelerators, global network, those health checks that we talked about right you can minimize buffering, reduce lag, and give your viewers a much smoother, more enjoyable experience. So
Chris 18:50
we could configure global accelerator with TCP or UDP listeners to optimize how that video data is being transported Exactly. You're
Kelly 18:58
thinking like a solutions architect. Well,
Chris 19:00
I've had a great teacher, so we've covered
Kelly 19:02
a lot of ground today. We've gone from that basic definition of what global accelerator is, why it's so important, to its role in achieving high availability elasticity, and even how it can help you save money.
Chris 19:12
And we broke down those exam questions to make sure you're ready for anything that AWS certification throws your
Kelly 19:18
way. Remember, this is just the start. There's a lot more to explore. Keep digging, keep experimenting, and see what you can build with AWS global accelerator.
Chris 19:27
And for all you cloud engineers out there, thanks for joining us on this deep dive into AWS global accelerator, and until next time, happy building.