Amazon’s Australian datacentre gets closer

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blog That Australian datacentre which Amazon was planning to build? It’s been a while since we heard a good rumour on that one, but The Register delivers this week, with news that the US cloud computing and online retail giant’s local plans are still on. El Reg tells us (we recommend that you click through for the full article):

“… AWS intends to offer cloud computing, as distinct from cloud storage and other AWS services. The computing service will not be served from an Amazon facility, as the company has chosen to co-locate in an existing third-party datacentre in Australia.”

Delimiter has previously speculated that Amazon would build a content distribution network in Australia (as it has done in several other locations around the globe) rather than a dedicated datacentre. From El Reg’s report, it sounds like the new datacentre will be somewhere in the middle, between a CDN node and a really huge dedicated datacentre facility. The idea of Amazon renting space in an existing commercial datacentre facility supports this notion.

Image credit: Amazon

6 COMMENTS

  1. Forgive me if this is dense, but does a CDN rule out access to Amazon Servers for music/movies etc. like they have access to in the US?

  2. There is a data centre hosting provider who is quite openly saying that Amazon has signed a contract to take half of their data centre in Sydney. I was meeting with them a couple of weeks ago and it has become part of their sales process to highlight this.

  3. I can confirm there is definitely a datacentre, they have approached quite a few people that have datacentre experience for job positions.

  4. I have been advised by snr exec at Equinix in SG that AWS has a signed agreement with Equinix Australia to use much of the remaining capacity of the Bourke Rd, Alexandria facility in Sydney. This is supported by the fact that AWS now has a 10GbE peering connection with Equinix (SYD) in addition to another 10GbE peer with PIPE (SYD).

    Both Equinix and AWS have been head hunting senior data centre and hosting people for many months in preparation for AWS’s rollout into Australia.

    On the flip side, the ‘physical’ arrival of AWS and the upcoming arrivals of Rackspace and Softlayer into Australia means there will be tough times ahead for local cloud compute players who don’t have an international presence such as NineFold and OrionVM amongst others.

    Other :
    Rackspace and Softlayer will be using Equinix and/or Digital Realty Trust in Sydney as both providers already have existing arrangements with Equinix and DRT on a global basis.

  5. They’re already partially up and going: Route 53 (DNS) and CloudFront (CDN) are both offering services from Sydney, as of very recently. They have yet to be announced on the AWS blog or website, however. These are just edge services (for which AWS have sites in 20+ cities) but one would have to assume the full kitchen sink of EC2, S3, etc. is well on the way.

    For example, traceroute to d35lb3dl296zwu.cloudfront.net — it resolves to d35lb3dl296zwu.syd1.cloudfront.net and routes to an Equinix DC in Sydney.

    An IP (router?) sitting in front of an anycast IP address that routes to Sydney for Route 53 comes from the following netblock — named as Amazon AU but with Telstra admin/tech contacts. In this case the packets take a different route to that used for CloudFront and instead go to Telstra(Global) in Sydney before the traceroute hits a wall; in this case there’s no obvious evidence of Equinix, as far as I can see. DNS queries directed at the relevant anycast IP only take a few milliseconds though, so they’re definitely local. Next nearest edge site is Singapore which is several tens of milliseconds if you’re transiting out via Perth.

    inetnum: 134.159.124.100 – 134.159.124.103
    netname: Amazon-AU
    descr: Amazon-AU
    country: AU
    admin-c: TI55-AP
    tech-c: TI54-AP
    status: ASSIGNED NON-PORTABLE
    mnt-by: MAINT-HK-TI
    mnt-irt: IRT-TELSTRA-INTL-HK
    changed: ipNOC@team.telstra.com 20120320
    source: APNIC

    person: Telstra-International IPNPD
    address: 14/F Telecom House, 3 Gloucester Road, Wanchai
    country: HK
    phone: +852 2983 3388
    fax-no: +852 2597 5896
    e-mail: ipnpd@team.telstra.com
    nic-hdl: TI55-AP
    abuse-mailbox: abuse@team.telstra.com
    mnt-by: MAINT-HK-TI
    changed: terry.choy@team.telstra.com 20120209
    source: APNIC

    person: Telstra-International IPNOC
    address: 14/F Telecom House, 3 Gloucester Road, Wanchai
    country: HK
    phone: +852 2983 4018
    e-mail: ipnoc@team.telstra.com
    nic-hdl: TI54-AP
    abuse-mailbox: abuse@team.telstra.com
    mnt-by: MAINT-HK-TI
    changed: terry.choy@team.telstra.com 20120209
    source: APNIC

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