AWS just released a new service in Builder Center, AWS Capabilities by Region.
I believe this will be a service that many might miss, but for those who know it exists, it will be integral when deciding where to place workloads when planning for migrations, disaster recovery regions, and expansions.
So what does the service do? It lets you compare what services and features exist in different regions. And this will make planning much easier and help avoid unnecessary work in regions that won’t support your workload.
For example, it is not uncommon when implementing a disaster recovery (DR) region that you, in the middle of setting it up, run into issues where a service/feature available in the main region doesn’t exist in the DR region, and you need to pivot to another region.
And by using this service in the planning stage, we can avoid issues like that.
Service and features
The main feature of the service is the Service and features, where you can compare different regions and see what services and features they offer.
To use it, you select what regions you want to check and either select all services or specific ones.
You will see a comparison of the availability of the service and its features between the regions.
One other great feature is that you will also be able to see when a service/feature is planned to be deployed to the region.
When I have used it, I have added all the services I am using, then selected the region I am currently in, and then selected the regions I am planning to migrate to. I quickly get an overview of which services and features will and will not work.
API Operations
Another feature of the service is to see what API operations are available in each region and compare the regions.
CloudFormation resources
You can also view and compare available CloudFormation resources in the regions.
Final Thoughts
This is a great new service that I will use a lot when planning where to place workloads. It will make it easy to get an overview of where the resources you need are available.
