Enable or disable AWS Regions in your account
An AWS Region is a physical location in the world where AWS has
multiple Availability Zones. Availability Zones consist of one or more discrete AWS data
centers, each with redundant power, networking, and connectivity, housed in separate
facilities. This means that each AWS Region is physically isolated and independent of the
other Regions. Regions provide fault tolerance, stability, and resilience, and can also
reduce latency. Running workloads in an AWS Region closer to end users can improve
performance and lower latency. For a map of available and upcoming Regions, see Regions and
Availability Zones
AWS Regions broadly fall into two categories of availability for accounts:
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Default Regions – Regions launched before March 20, 2019 are enabled by default. You can create and manage resources in these default Regions immediately after your account activation. Default Regions cannot be enabled or disabled.
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Opt-in Regions – Regions launched after March 20, 2019 are disabled by default and referred to as opt-in Regions. Disabled opt-in Regions are not shown in the Console Navigation bar, and you cannot use these Regions to create workloads until they are enabled. To use these opt-in Regions, you must first enable them in your AWS account. After enabling an opt-in Region, you can select that Region in the navigation bar and create and manage resources in that Region. To enable opt-in Region for your standalone accounts, see Enable or disable a Region for standalone accounts and to enable opt-in Region for your member accounts, see Enable or disable a Region in your organization.
When you sign up for an AWS account, AWS recommends an opt-in Region for you based on your contact address country. Customers in a country with an AWS opt-in Region see a recommendation on the Contact Information page to enable the opt-in Region in that country. Customers in a country with both an opt-in Region and a default Region, like India, Australia, or Canada, see a recommendation to select the opt-in Region if the opt-in Region is closer to them than the default Region. After an account is activated, you can enable other AWS opt-in Regions in your account or choose to disable the opt-in Region you enabled during sign-up.
When you create an AWS account, your IAM data and credentials are automatically configured to work across all default Regions, allowing the root user and IAM identities with appropriate permissions to access AWS services in these Regions using their existing credentials. AWS opt-in Regions are disabled by default, and IAM data and credentials are not initially available in these Regions, which prevents access to AWS services in that Region. When you choose to enable an opt-in Region, AWS propagates your IAM data and credentials to that Region. Once the propagation is complete and the opt-in Region is enabled, the root user and IAM identities can then access AWS services in the newly enabled opt-in Region using the same IAM credentials they use in default Regions.
When you disable an opt-in Region, your IAM credentials are deactivated and you lose IAM access to the resources in that opt-in Region. Disabling an opt-in Region does not delete the resources in that Region and charges for resources (if any) in that disabled opt-in Region continue to accrue at the standard rate.
AWS groups Regions into partitions. Every Region is in exactly one partition, and each partition
has one or more Regions. Partitions have independent instances of AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) and
provide a hard boundary between Regions in different partitions. AWS commercial
Regions are in the aws partition, Regions in China are in the
aws-cn partition, and AWS GovCloud (US) Regions are in the
aws-us-gov partition. Depending on the partition where you created your
AWS account, you can use AWS Regions within that partition.
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An account in
awspartition provides you access to multiple Regions in the commercial partition so that you can launch AWS resources in locations that meet your requirements. For example, you might want to launch Amazon EC2 instances in Europe to be closer to your European customers or to meet legal requirements. -
An account in
aws-us-govpartition provides you access to the AWS GovCloud (US-West) Region and the AWS GovCloud (US-East) Region. For more information, see AWS GovCloud (US). -
An account in
aws-cnpartition provides you access to the Beijing and Ningxia Regions only. For more information, see Amazon Web Services in China.
Topics
Regional availability reference
The following tables list AWS Regions by availability type. Default Regions are enabled automatically and cannot be disabled, while opt-in Regions must be manually enabled before you can use them:
For a list of Region names and their corresponding codes, see Regional
endpoints in the AWS General Reference Guide. For a list
of AWS services supported in each Region (without endpoints), see the AWS
Regional Services List
Important
AWS recommends that you use regional AWS Security Token Service (AWS STS) endpoints instead of the global endpoint to reduce latency. Session tokens from regional AWS STS endpoints are valid in all AWS Regions. If you use regional AWS STS endpoints, you don't need to make any changes. However, session tokens from the global AWS STS endpoint (https://sts.amazonaws.com) are valid only in AWS Regions that you enable, or that are enabled by default. If you intend to enable a new Region for your account, you can either use session tokens from regional AWS STS endpoints or activate the global AWS STS endpoint to issue session tokens that are valid in all AWS Regions. Session tokens that are valid in all Regions are larger. If you store session tokens, these larger tokens might affect your systems. For more information about how AWS STS endpoints work with AWS Regions, see Managing AWS STS in an AWS Region.
Considerations before enabling and disabling Regions
Before you enable or disable a Region, it's important to consider the following:
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You can use all destination Regions in a cross-Region inference geography regardless of Region-opt status – Certain AWS generative AI services including Amazon Bedrock (see Increase throughput with cross-Region inference) and Amazon Q Developer (see Cross-region processing in Amazon Q Developer) use cross-region inference. If you use those services, they automatically select the optimal AWS Region–including Regions that you have not enabled for resources and IAM data–within your chosen geography. This improves the customer experience by maximizing available compute and model availability.
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You can use IAM permissions to control access to Regions – AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) includes four permissions that let you control which users can enable, disable, get, and list Regions. For more information, see AWS: Allows enabling and disabling AWS Regions in the IAM User Guide. You can also use the
aws:RequestedRegioncondition key to control access to AWS services in an AWS Region. -
Enabling and disabling a Region is free – There is no charge to enable or disable a Region. You're charged only for resources that you create in the new Region.
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Amazon EventBridge integration – You can subscribe to region-opt status update notifications in EventBridge. An EventBridge notification will be created for each status change, allowing customers to automate work flows.
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Expressive Region-opt status – Due to the asynchronous nature of enabling/disabling an opt-in region, there are four potential statuses for a region-opt request:
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ENABLING -
DISABLING -
ENABLED -
DISABLED
You cannot cancel an opt-in or opt-out when it is in either
ENABLINGorDISABLINGstatus. Otherwise, aConflictExceptionwill be thrown. A completed (Enabled/Disabled) region-opt request is dependent on the provisioning of key underlying AWS services. There might be some AWS services that will not be immediately usable despite the status beingENABLED. -
Processing times and request limits
When enabling or disabling Regions, be aware of the following timing and request limitations:
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Enabling a Region takes a few minutes to several hours in some cases – 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 can sometimes take several hours. You cannot use the Region until this process is complete.
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Disabling a Region isn't always immediately visible – Services and consoles might be temporarily visible after disabling a region. Disabling a Region can takes a few minutes to several hours to take effect.
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A single account can have 6 region-opt requests in progress at any given time – One request is equal to either an enable or disable of one particular region for one account.
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Organizations can have 50 region-opt requests open at a given time across an AWS organization – The management account can at any point in time have 50 open requests pending completion for its organization. One request is equal to either an enable or disable of one particular region for one account.
Enable or disable a Region for standalone accounts
To update which Regions your AWS account has access to, perform the steps in the following procedure. The AWS Management Console procedure below always works only in the standalone context. You can use the AWS Management Console to view or update only the available Regions in the account you used to call the operation.
Enable or disable a Region in your organization
To update the enabled Regions for member accounts of your AWS Organizations, perform the steps in the following procedure.
Note
The AWS Organizations managed policies AWSOrganizationsReadOnlyAccess or
AWSOrganizationsFullAccess are updated to provide permission to
access the AWS Account Management APIs so you can access account data from the AWS Organizations console.
To view the updated managed policies, see Updates to Organizations AWS managed policies.
Note
Before you can perform these operations from the management account or a delegated admin account in an organization for use with member accounts, you must:
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Enable all features in your organization to manage settings on your member accounts. This allows admin control over the member accounts. This is set by default when you create your organization. If your organization is set to consolidated billing only, and you want to enable all features, see Enabling all features in your organization.
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Enable trusted access for the AWS Account Management service. To set this up, see Enable trusted access for AWS Account Management.
