At Ory, we have built a globally distributed system for identity and access management (IAM) to meet the needs of our customers who operate in a global marketplace. Our Ory Network is the only multi-region IAM in the world, handling billions of API requests daily. We understand the importance of speed, reliability, and compliance with local laws, which is why we have implemented a scalable multi-region architecture. Single-region architectures can lead to downtime, data loss, limited disaster recovery options, performance bottlenecks, and vulnerability to network failures. In contrast, a multi-region architecture offers improved availability, disaster recovery, reduced latency, enhanced data redundancy and security, and compliance with regulations. For IAM specifically, a multi-region architecture ensures low-latency access, increased availability and reliability, compliance with data homing regulations, unified user identity across regions, and dynamic scalability. We also discuss the challenges and considerations of data homing, encryption, and the choice of distributed data store. The Ory Network Stack is built on technologies like Golang, Kubernetes, ArgoCD, Crossplane, CockroachDB, Cloudflare, and a comprehensive logging and monitoring stack. Implementing a multi-region system with CockroachDB has been a journey of excitement and challenges.
https://www.ory.dev/global-identity-and-access-management-multi-region/