Using local zones with ElastiCache

A Local Zone is an extension of an AWS Region that is geographically close to your users. You can extend any virtual private cloud (VPC) from a parent AWS Region into a Local Zones by creating a new subnet and assigning it to the Local Zone. When you create a subnet in a Local Zone, your VPC is extended to that Local Zone. The subnet in the Local Zone operates the same as other subnets in your VPC.

By using Local Zones, you can place resources such as an ElastiCache cluster in multiple locations close to your users.

When you create an ElastiCache cluster, you can choose a subnet in a Local Zone. Local Zones have their own connections to the internet and support AWS Direct Connect. Thus, resources created in a Local Zone can serve local users with very low-latency communications. For more information, see AWS Local Zones.

A Local Zone is represented by an AWS Region code followed by an identifier that indicates the location, for example us-west-2-lax-1a.

At this time, the available Local Zones are us-west-2-lax-1a and us-west-2-lax-1b.

The following limitations apply to ElastiCache for Local Zones:

• Global datastores aren't supported.

• Online migration isn't supported.

• The following node types are supported by Local Zones at this time:

  • Current generation:

    M5 node types: cache.m5.large, cache.m5.xlarge, cache.m5.2xlarge, cache.m5.4xlarge, cache.m5.12xlarge, cache.m5.24xlarge

    R5 node types: cache.r5.large, cache.r5.xlarge, cache.r5.2xlarge, cache.r5.4xlarge, cache.r5.12xlarge, cache.r5.24xlarge

    T3 node types: cache.t3.micro, cache.t3.small, cache.t3.medium

Enabling a local zone

1. Enable the Local Zone in the Amazon EC2 console.

   For more information, see Enabling Local Zones in the Amazon EC2 User Guide.

2. Create a subnet in the Local Zone.

   For more information, see Creating a subnet in your VPC in the Amazon VPC User Guide.

3. Create an ElastiCache subnet group in the Local Zone.

   When you create an ElastiCache subnet group, choose the Availability Zone group for the Local Zone.

   For more information, see Creating a subnet group.

4. Create an ElastiCache (Memcached) cluster that uses the ElastiCache subnet in the Local Zone.

   For more information, see Creating a Memcached cluster (console).

5. Create an ElastiCache (Redis OSS) cluster that uses the ElastiCache subnet in the Local Zone. For more information, see one of the following topics:

   • Creating a Valkey (cluster mode disabled) cluster (Console)

   • Creating a Valkey or Redis OSS (cluster mode enabled) cluster (Console)