Managing AWS Regions
An AWS Region is a collection of AWS resources in a geographic area. Each AWS Region is isolated and independent of the other Regions. Regions provide fault tolerance, stability, and resilience, and can also reduce latency. They enable you to create redundant resources that remain available and unaffected by a Regional outage.
The resources that you create in one Region do not exist in any other Region unless you explicitly use a replication feature offered by an AWS service. For example, Amazon S3 and Amazon EC2 support cross-Region replication. Some services, such as AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM), do not have Regional resources.
You can use policy conditions to control access to AWS services in an AWS Region.
Resources
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For a list of Region names and codes, see this table.
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For a map of available and upcoming Regions, see Regions and Availability Zones
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For a list of AWS services supported in each Region (without endpoints), see the AWS Regional Services List
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Enabling a Region
Regions introduced before March 20, 2019 are enabled by default. You can begin creating and managing resources in these Regions immediately. You cannot enable or disable a Region that is enabled by default.
If a Region is disabled by default, you must enable it before you can create and manage resources. The following Regions are disabled by default:
Africa (Cape Town)
Asia Pacific (Hong Kong)
Asia Pacific (Jakarta)
Europe (Milan)
Middle East (Bahrain)
Middle East (UAE)
When you enable a Region, AWS performs actions to prepare your account in that Region, such as distributing your IAM resources to the Region. This process takes a few minutes for most accounts, but this can take several hours. You cannot use the Region until this process is complete.
Requirements
To enable a Region that is disabled, you must have permission to enable Regions. To view an example IAM policy, see Allow enabling and disabling AWS Regions in the IAM User Guide.
To enable a Region
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Sign in to the AWS Management Console.
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In the upper right corner of the console, choose your account name or number and then choose Account.
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Under AWS Regions, in the Action column for the Region to enable, choose Enable.
Tip If the Status column says Enabled by default, then you do not need to enable the Region.
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In the dialog box, review the informational text and then choose Enable Region.
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Wait until the Region is ready to use.
Disabling a Region
If you enabled one of the following Regions, which are disabled by default, then you can disable it as needed:
Africa (Cape Town)
Asia Pacific (Hong Kong)
Asia Pacific (Jakarta)
Europe (Milan)
Middle East (Bahrain)
Middle East (UAE)
After you disable a Region, the resources in this Region become unavailable based on eventual consistency. However, they are not deleted. You can enable this Region again as needed.
Requirements
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You cannot disable a Region that is enabled by default.
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To disable a Region, you must have permission to disable Regions. To view an example IAM policy, see Allow enabling and disabling AWS Regions in the IAM User Guide.
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Before you disable a Region, we recommend that you remove all resources from that Region. After you disable a Region, you can no longer view or manage resources in the Region from that account through the AWS Management console or AWS APIs with IAM principals. However, resources in that Region can continue to incur charges. For more information, see Enabling and disabling Regions in the AWS Billing and Cost Management User Guide.
To disable a Region
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Sign in to the AWS Management Console.
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In the upper right corner of the console, choose your account name or number and then choose Account.
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Under AWS Regions, in the Action column for the Region to disable, choose Disable.
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In the dialog box, review the informational text and then choose Disable Region.
Describing your Regions using the AWS CLI
Use the describe-regions command to describe the Regions available for your account, whether they are enabled or disabled.
aws ec2 describe-regions --all-regions
If the Region is enabled by default, the output includes the following:
"OptInStatus": "opt-in-not-required"
If the Region is not enabled, the output includes the following:
"OptInStatus": "not-opted-in"
After an opt-in Region is enabled, the output includes the following:
"OptInStatus": "opted-in"
