
AWS announces new region in Canada - forrestbrazeal
https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2016/12/announcing-the-aws-canada-central-region/
======
forrestbrazeal
This announcement actually broke some code of mine today. I have a scheduled
AWS Lambda function that downloads the current EC2 Price List every hour to
make some real-time cost savings calculations for stopped resources. The
addition of the Canada prices to that file made it just a bit too large for
the memory assigned to the function, causing a silent "Process exited without
completing request" crash. Good times.

~~~
nothrabannosir
Purely out of curiosity; are you allowed to share how much time this cost you
to make, and how much money / month it saves you?

I love the idea, and the fact that you actually implemented it. :)

~~~
forrestbrazeal
It's part of a larger system called Hanover (built entirely on Lambda/API
Gateway/DynamoDB/static S3) that handles scheduled shutdowns and cost savings
reports across our many AWS development accounts. We built the shutdown POC in
less than a week - the front end reporting console took a bit longer. We may
open source it at some point. In the meantime you can check out:

\- A session my boss did at re:Invent that touches on some of our cloud
management tools, including Hanover [0]

\- A blog post I did back when we were putting this together that explains our
approach to calculating EC2 prices for live instances (it's not as easy as you
would think/hope) [1]

[0]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Epx_32c3c6s&feature=youtu.be](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Epx_32c3c6s&feature=youtu.be)
[1] [https://forrestbrazeal.com/2016/09/25/adventures-in-aws-
unde...](https://forrestbrazeal.com/2016/09/25/adventures-in-aws-
understanding-the-price-list-api/)

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exhilaration
For the curious, the data center is in Montreal according to the press
release:
[http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20161208006034/en/Amaz...](http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20161208006034/en/Amazon-
Web-Services-Cloud-Customers-Data-Centers)

~~~
api
OVH has a monster data center there too. The region has very cheap power due
to a lot of hydroelectric available.

~~~
faeriol
The region should have become the Datacenter capital of North-America...

Cold temperatures, Cheap (and renewable) power...

~~~
simonebrunozzi
You need proximity to a ton of people to become the Datacenter capital; I
doubt Montreal qualifies.

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dghughes
I think the GTA has as many people ~8 million as all of Quebec ~8 million.

~~~
betaby
No, GTA is ~6M and Greater Montreal ~4 GTA is not that big in terms of
population and very sparse comparable with other big metros.

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ironlady
So many companies that legally required a server physically located in Canada
are going to be running to AWS now, practically everyone touching health care,
government, personal data, or even getting some level of government funding
likely was obligated to keep things within Canadian borders.

~~~
davidjgraph
How can you be sure that data transmitting between the centre and user in
Canada doesn't leave Canadian borders?

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psybin
It almost certainly goes through the US no matter what you do. Traffic going
anywhere out of my city first drops down to a big peer exchange in the US,
then back up into Canada.

~~~
voltagex_
That's odd. I know traceroutes don't always show the truth, but when I was
there I could route between Victoria and Vancouver without going through the
US, at least. No idea about Vancouver to Montreal.

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neom
DigitalOcean also has a DC in Canada, this is really useful for companies in
Canada or doing business in Canada that have requirements around keeping
Canadian customer data in Canada. Additionally the Canadian startup ecosystem
seems to be doing pretty well relatively to other regions.

~~~
Twirrim
Data Locality is going to continue to be a strong driver for cloud providers
getting a presence in different countries.

It feels like it's post-Snowden (but it may be I wasn't paying enough
attention before then), but more and more countries have been passing data
locality laws and are less willing to have their data residing in the US.

~~~
api
Does data locality matter if the servers are controlled by a US company?

~~~
Cyph0n
Well, in theory, US companies could still leak user data out, but the
consequences are dire if Canada (or whoever) finds out. On the other hand, if
Canadian user data is stored in AWS US East for example, then Canada can do
absolutely nothing from a legal standpoint.

~~~
eigenvector
If the US government did demand data stored in Canada from a US company in
contravention of Canadian law, wouldn't they just include a gag order so the
US company can't tell their customer about it? And since the vast majority of
the US company's assets and operations are in the US, they wouldn't dare stand
up to the US government.

~~~
count
Microsoft is fighting for everybody on this one right now.
[http://www.technology-law-blog.co.uk/2016/07/relief-in-
the-c...](http://www.technology-law-blog.co.uk/2016/07/relief-in-the-cloud-
community-as-microsoft-wins-appeal-in-irish-email-server-case.html)

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josephscott
And the blog post about this from Jeff Barr -
[https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/now-open-aws-canada-
central...](https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/now-open-aws-canada-central-
region/)

~~~
jeffbarr
Thanks!

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metaloha
When did Montreal become "central" Canada? Why didn't Amazon call it Canada
East instead?

~~~
skylan_q
As far as I've ever known, Ontario and Quebec are central Canada.

~~~
cmrdporcupine
Growing up in Alberta, people often referred to Ontario/QC as "out east" and
"down east." My brother still does that. And many people there seem unable to
make a proper distinction between eastern and central Canada economically or
politically too.

~~~
mthoms
In my experience, Ontario and Quebec are colloquially referred to as "Out
East" or "Eastern Provinces" while the Atlantic provinces are referred to more
often as "The Maritimes" or the "East Coast".

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mcrae
I wonder how they are coming up with the region names? Most are cities (Sao
Paolo, Frankfurt), some are countries (Ireland), some regions (N. Virginia,
Oregon).

This new region is unique in that is does not refer to an actual place, and
that the name alone is not descriptive (in the AWS console, it says just
"Central" in the header).

~~~
discodave
Maybe it's just in case Quebec secedes. ;)

In all seriousness I can see AWS eventually having to put multiple regions in
some countries because the x province doesn't trust the y province.

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ris
Got to wonder if there's been an uptick in enquiries about moving some
operations across the border in the last month.

~~~
dorfsmay
The site went live today. It takes a lot more than a month to plan something
like this!

As others have commented, I do think it has more to do with legal requirements
(health industry etc...).

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numbsafari
I hear it runs on maple syrup.

~~~
kahnpro
I live in Montreal and the local authorities have already begun maple syrup
rationing due to the new data centre. I'm only permitted one litre per month.
People are starting to riot.

~~~
perardi
Maple syrup is serious business/organized crime in Montreal.

CBC: Reputed ringleader in $18.7M maple syrup heist found guilty

[http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/maple-syrup-heist-
que...](http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/maple-syrup-heist-quebec-
canada-guilty-1.3848431)

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simlevesque
I'm in Montreal. If I understand, most of the speed boost I might feel will be
EC2 instances and CloudFront stuff. Will it have any effect on S3's latency ?

~~~
dgemm
It won't affect latency to any bucket in any other region. But if you create
an S3 bucket in Montreal then you should have excellent latency to that.

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edblarney
Finally.

We are so similar to the US, that we're generally considered an afterthought
for everything.

'Just give them the us thing' is the US companies Canadian strategy ...

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dubcanada
The prices seem to have a 14% roughly increase compared to US East.

I also assume that this also means Canadian tax is going to start being added
onto all the prices?

~~~
vacri
Yes. They add Australian, Japanese, and UK tax to services run in those
regions. Canada will be in the same boat.

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gaurav-gupta
sure don't have to worry about keeping the servers cool eh? :)

~~~
tempestn
The location will help, but it's not like Montreal is in the frozen tundra.
It's about 30 miles from the border with Vermont. All of Washington state is
north of Montreal.

~~~
olalonde
It's not the frozen tundra but you can't compare climates with latitude alone.
Montreal still gets a lot colder than Washington State or Vancouver.

Source:
[https://gfycat.com/UnlinedAdorableElectriceel](https://gfycat.com/UnlinedAdorableElectriceel)

~~~
tempestn
Ha, yes, I know. The reference to Vermont was more relevant.

I actually chose Washington state intentionally over North Dakota since its
mild climate made for a more striking comparison. Factually correct, but
perhaps a bit misleading.

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coding123
Good move for AWS and Canada :)

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redwood
Would love to see three AZs

