AWS Asia Pacific – Hong Kong Region | Hacker News Reader

AWS Asia Pacific – Hong Kong Region

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51 pointsjeffbarr19 comments

I often wonder what happened during the 2013 - 2017 era, that Google, Amazon, many Cloud / DC Hosting Services, Internet Backbone Companies all of sudden decide to invest in HK. When they had all previously decided against such investment in 2009 - 2012. Or they did and then pulled out.

There is a new Submarine Cable being lay out every year connecting HK to Sydney or US or other parts of the world.

I mean HK has been the Financial Center for Asia and hasn't changed one bit, you cant tell me all of a sudden they discover there are lots of demands from Financial Companies and they are all rushing to layer new cables and built DC for them.

It's the best way to get close to China without actually having to put infrastructure in China. There's a _lot_ of demand for access to China, and many companies who want it are fine with Hong Kong.

But these are exactly the reason why it should have been done earlier, And these reason would have been the same in 2010 - 2016.

When Google started negotiation in 2010 and announced their HK Datacenter project in 2011, every one thought this should finally kickstart what was then even consider as being late to the DC and Connectivity race in the region. And all of a sudden 2012 Google decided to pull out. Cloudflare could have opened an Office in HK but decided Singapore instead. Lots and Lots of Datacenter / Hosting companies came and looked and decided to give it a pass.

Something changed in 2016 and there has since been lots of investment in Data Center and Connectivity.

How does stuff hosted in this region work regarding the China Firewall?

There is no GFW in Hong Kong, so you enjoy unfettered Internet access.

For traffic inbound to China from HK, traditionally it's been slightly faster but that may just be proximity rather than any preferential treatment by the GFW.

Can confirm. We have datacenter space in Hong Kong with a fiber connection to he.net and it is indistinguishable from all of our other sites, globally.

End user Internet usage in Hong Kong is also indistinguishable from California. Although, to be fair, I stay at (relatively) expensive, western hotels and my Internet experience inside of mainland China is also indistinguishable from California.

Hong Kong, along with neighboring Macau are designated SARs(special administrative regions) of China. There is not Great Firewall. All the same services Google, Gmail, FB etc that work elsewhere work are unfiltered. See:

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/special-administrative-...

You'll still have to go over the firewall, you'll just be closer to it. It will be nice to see if the new region decreases the latency between the cn-north-1 or cn-northwest-1 regions and AWS global regions over DX connections. Right now, the majority of private leased connections in/out of China surface in HK, so ap-southeast-1 has been our region of choice for the global side of DX connections.

Just tried to login to AWS Console but just getting a "Website Temporarily Unavailable": https://console.aws.amazon.com/console/home

Is this the first AWS datacenter in China?

This is likely the first AWS operated DC in China. The ones in mainland china are operated by: "AWS China (Beijing) Region based out of Beijing and adjacent areas is Beijing Sinnet Technology Co., Ltd. (Sinnet), and the service operator and provider for AWS (Ningxia) Region based out of Ningxia is Ningxia Western Cloud Data Technology Co., Ltd. (NWCD)" [1]

GCP & Azure already have Hong Kong regions. [2] [3]

[1] https://www.amazonaws.cn/en/about-aws/china/

[2] https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/global-infrastructure/loca...

[3] https://cloud.google.com/about/locations/hongkong/

Not sure I would describe Hong Kong as China. As a SAR, it is _pretty_ independent. This could be (and is) debated on the political side, but almost completely on the technological infrastructure side. There is no internet filtering, no great firewall, excellent connectivity, etc.

No, we already have AWS Regions in Beijing and Ningxia. Each region includes multiple Availability Zones (AZs).

Hey Jeff,

I get those mainland China regions are via your partners, and have a separate portal/account, etc. But why does creating a AWS China account require an ICP? I have no intention of serving/hosting content from there, I'm just looking for in-country compute. (To be fair, other US-based cloud providers like Azure have the same ICP-to-even-create-account requirement to access mainland China locations).

What is strange is I am able to use Alibaba Cloud, and spin up mainland China instances but didn't need an ICP as part of the account creation process. Why the difference with AWS China?

I did an Ask HN about experience with AWS China and got no bites...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17522491

Any insights are super appreciated. Thank you in advance.

I think it's a combination of CYA, government regulations, and simplifying operations for AWS. Without an ICP, you're not allowed any web presence in CN, which would require AWSCN to either modify services that are publicly available by default or not offering them. Instead, if they make an ICP a requirement, they have a defensible position with CN regulators, who really just want a throat to choke.

As AWSCN is reasonably far behind compared to Global regions, and they've already enough complexity just doing business in China, so I think it's completely reasonable the trade-off they've made or been forced to make here regarding ICP.

It is if you mean operating independently, otherwise AWS is available within mainland China under partnership agreement.

Operating independently... for now.

Well it is Hong Kong, so that will last for till at least 2046.

Ah, the memories. I joined AWS in Europe in 2008 as the first (non Data Center) employee, shortly joined by Martin. Then on Jan 1st, 2010 four of us (Shane, Kingsley, Rick and I) "started" the APAC region.

I visited HK in April 2010 to speak at a conference (it was my second time ever in HK). Rick, who knew HK well, suggested I try Lanson place - terrific breakfast and great position to visit perspective clients.

These were really great times. Small team, good bonds, lots to build.

It gives you a real sense of perspective to think that now AWS has a "region" in Hong Kong. Still mind-blowing how fast AWS grew in these years.

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