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Community Blog New Product Updates, And An Analysis of Alibaba Cloud's Global Expansion - Friday Blog, Week 50

New Product Updates, And An Analysis of Alibaba Cloud's Global Expansion - Friday Blog, Week 50

See what's new on Alibaba Cloud this week, and also learn how Alibaba Cloud has expanded since it opened its first public datacenter in 2011!

By: Jeremy Pedersen

Welcome back for another Friday update! This week we're taking it easy and considering some fresh product updates.

We did a product update blog just a few weeks ago, so this'll be a quick one!

BONUS: You can find a quick analysis of Alibaba Cloud's global expansion at the end of this article!

What's New: Storage

Cloud Drive Service

Alibaba Cloud's Cloud Drive service is now available in regions outside China, speeding things up considerably for non-Chinese users!

Unfortunately, the documentation for this product is still only available in Chinese. Google Translate should help!

What's New: Networking

Global Accelerator

Alibaba Cloud's GA (Global Accelerator) Service has added support for multiple SSL/TLS certificates. You can learn more here.

What's New: Databases

RDS for PostgreSQL

Self-built PostgreSQL databases can be migrated to RDS using the new one-click migration feature. Learn more here.

Redis (and Tair)

  • You can now export a full list of Redis instance information for all your instances. See this documentation.

  • Three new Zones now support redis, as documented here. The Zones are:

    • Beijing Zone J
    • Jakarta Zone A
    • Kuala Lumpur Zone B

AnalyticDB for MySQL

AnalyticDB for MySQL now allows data export to HDFS, as documented here.

Data Lake Formation (DLF)

Alibaba Cloud's Datalake tool, DLF, is finally live on alibabacloud.com!

Learn more here. Outside China, the service is currently available in Singapore.

In Case You Missed It: Alibaba Cloud's Global Presence

If you have been watching Alibaba Cloud for a while, you'll know that it has been expanding and adding new datacenters for more than a decade.

In fact, with the exception of a pause in 2019, at least one new Region has been opened every year since 2011!

Just in case you missed it, Alibaba Cloud is now up to 25 Regions and 80 Zones. Here's the full breakdown:

Regions Outside Mainland China

Outside Mainland China, there are 13 Regions and 27 Zones:

  1. Asia Pacific SE 1 (Singapore): 3 Zones, opened in 2015
  2. Asia Pacific SE 2 (Sydney): 2 Zones, opened in 2016
  3. Asia Pacific SE 3 (Kuala Lumpur): 2 Zones, opened in 2017
  4. Asia Pacific SE 5 (Jakarta): 3 Zones, opened in 2018
  5. Asia Pacific SE 6 (Philippines): 1 Zone, opened in 2021
  6. Asia Pacific SOU 1 (Mumbai): 2 Zones, opened in 2018
  7. Asia Pacific NE 1 (Tokyo): 2 Zones, opened in 2016
  8. US East 1 (Virginia): 2 Zones, opened in 2015
  9. US West 1 (Silicon Valley): 2 Zones, opened in 2014
  10. EU Central 1 (Frankfurt): 2 Zones, opened in 2016
  11. UK (London): 2 Zones, opened in 2018
  12. Middle East 1 (Dubai): 1 Zone, opened in 2016
  13. China (Hong Kong): 3 Zones, opened in 2014

Inside Mainland China

Inside Mainland China, there are 12 Regions and 53 Zones:

  1. China North 1 (Qingdao): 2 Zones, opened in 2012
  2. China North 2 (Beijing): 12 Zones, opened in 2013
  3. China North 3 (Zhangjiakou): 3 Zones, opened in 2014
  4. China North 5 (Hohhot): 2 Zones, opened in 2017
  5. China North 6 (Ulanqab): 3 Zones, opened in 2020
  6. China East 1 (Hangzhou): 8 Zones, opened in 2011
  7. China East 2 (Shanghai): 10 Zones, opened in 2015
  8. China East 3 (Nanjing): 1 Zone, opened in 2021
  9. China South 1 (Shenzhen): 6 Zones, opened in 2014
  10. China South 2 (Heyuan): 2 Zones, opened in 2020
  11. China South 3 (Guangzhou): 2 Zones, opened in 2020
  12. China West 1 (Chengdu): 2 Zones, opened in 2020

Alibaba Cloud In Pictures: Regional Expansion and Distribution

It's hard to see what's going on with just a "wall of text", so let's break things down a bit more by graphing things out!

All the data used below comes from this page.

Let's start by looking at Alibaba Cloud's Regions and Zones:

datacenters_and_zones

First, a couple of important notes:

  1. I include Hong Kong in "Asia (China)" in both charts above
  2. India and Australia are counted as "Asia (Everywhere Else)"

A quick glance at the chart shows where Alibaba Cloud's advantage is: China and Broader Asia:

  • More than 50% of Alibaba Cloud's Regions are in China, and more than 70% of its Zones are located there, meaning Regions in China tend to have more Zones
  • 80% of Alibaba Cloud's Regions, comprising 89% of its Zones, are located in Asia (counting China)

We can learn even more by taking note of the opening dates for Alibaba Cloud's regions:

regions_over_time

The key takeaway is continuous expansion: there has only been one year (2019) in which no new Regions went online!

Looking at the chart above, we can break the expansion down into "eras":

  1. 2011-2014: Early buildup, focusing on China.
  2. 2015-2018: International expansion across Europe, the Americas, and Asia.
  3. 2019-present: Re-focus on Asia, with new datacenters in China and Southeast Asia.

It's likely that the focus on Asia will continue in the near term, so be on the lookout for new Regions there.

That's all for this week, see you next time!

I've Got A Question!

Great! Reach out to me at jierui.pjr@alibabacloud.com and I'll do my best to answer in a future Friday Q&A blog.

You can also follow the Alibaba Cloud Academy LinkedIn Page. We'll re-post these blogs there each Friday.

Not a LinkedIn person? We're also on Twitter and YouTube.

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