AWS Taipei Region (ap-east-2) Now Available: Setup Guide & Cost Analysis

2025 is a historic year for Taiwan’s cloud industry as AWS officially launches a new data center in Taipei (ap-east-2), bringing all three major public clouds together. This not only signifies Taiwan’s important position in the global cloud landscape but also provides local enterprises with unprecedented opportunities for digital transformation. Through localized cloud infrastructure, companies can enjoy millisecond-level latency optimization, complete data sovereignty protection, and more competitive operating costs. This article will analyze the core advantages of AWS Asia Pacific (Taipei) region, provide a comprehensive implementation guide, and conduct detailed cross-region cost analysis to help you maximize the value of this new service.

Core Features and Advantages of AWS Taipei Region

Latency Optimization

The Taipei region offers significant latency improvements for Taiwanese users. Initial tests show an average latency of 2-5ms from Taipei accessing the local region, compared to 35-40ms in Singapore and 25-30ms in Tokyo, an improvement of up to 85-90%. This is critical for latency-sensitive applications such as real-time trading systems, online gaming, and video streaming.

Compliance Benefits

Aligned with Taiwan’s data localization regulations, AWS Asia Pacific (Taipei) region ensures sensitive data remains within Taiwan, meeting strict compliance requirements for finance, healthcare, government, and other industries.

High Availability Architecture

The Taipei region is configured with 3 Availability Zones (AZs), interconnected via high-speed private networks, ensuring 99.99% SLA availability. Multi-AZ deployment enables automatic failover, providing enterprise-grade disaster recovery.

Full Service Support

Initial supported core services include:

• Compute: EC2, Lambda, ECS, EKS
• Storage: S3, EBS, EFS, FSx
• Databases: RDS, DynamoDB, ElastiCache, DocumentDB
• Networking: VPC, CloudFront, Route 53, Direct Connect
• Analytics: Kinesis, EMR, Athena, QuickSight

Disaster Recovery Strategy

Complementing other Asia-Pacific regions, disaster recovery uses Singapore or Tokyo as backup sites, with data synchronization via S3 Cross-Region Replication and RDS Read Replicas.

Implementation Guide for New Region Activation

Pre-Preparation

Account Permissions Ensure IAM users have activation permissions:

• account:ListRegions
• account:EnableRegion
• account:DisableRegion

AWS Console Procedure

1. Log in to AWS Management Console.
2. Click your account name in the top right corner, then select Manage Regions.
3. Check the Taipei region and click Enable.
4. Wait for the region to activate, then select AWS Taipei (ap-east-2).

CLI/SDK Method

# Enable region
aws account enable-region --region-name ap-east-2

# Verify status
aws account get-region-opt-status --region-name ap-east-2
{
  "RegionName": "ap-east-2",
  "RegionOptStatus": "ENABLING"
}

Cost Comparison Across Regions

EC2 Instance Monthly Costs (USD)

Storage Costs (per GB/month)

Overall, Taipei’s pricing is about 10-15% cheaper than Singapore and 20-25% cheaper than Tokyo, offering significant cost savings for large-scale deployments.

Conclusion

The official launch of AWS Taipei (ap-east-2) brings three key advantages to Taiwanese enterprises: ultra-low latency of 2-5ms, full data localization compliance, and 10-25% lower operating costs compared to other APAC regions. This in-depth analysis shows that the new region not only provides complete AWS service support and multi-AZ high availability but also opens new possibilities for enterprise digital transformation.

You can start using AWS Free Tier to set up test environments in the new region today and experience the latency improvements firsthand.

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Related Resources:

• AWS Pricing Calculator