What distinguishes cloud regions from availability zones?

The distinction between cloud regions and availability zones is fundamentally based on their geographical and structural organization within cloud environments. Regions are defined as large geographical areas that host multiple data centers, often referred to as availability zones. Each region can span a vast area, covering cities or countries, comprised of these individual or grouped data centers that function as separate physical locations.

Availability zones, on the other hand, are the actual physical data centers or clusters of data centers within a region. They are designed to operate independently to ensure higher availability and fault tolerance. By creating multiple availability zones within a region, cloud providers can offer redundancy and reduce the risk of downtime due to localized failures.

This structure allows organizations to deploy applications across different availability zones while ensuring proximity and lower latency, which enhances performance and reliability. Hence, option A accurately captures the essence of this architectural design in cloud computing, making it the correct choice.