Added flag to skip zone check

pkg/cloudprovider/providers/aws/aws.go

@@ -300,6 +300,8 @@ type CloudConfig struct {
 		//has setup a rule that allows inbound traffic on kubelet ports from the
 		//local VPC subnet (so load balancers can access it). E.g. 10.82.0.0/16 30000-32000.
 		DisableSecurityGroupIngress bool
+		
+		DisableStrictZoneCheck bool
 	}
 }
 
@@ -664,9 +666,13 @@ func newAWSCloud(config io.Reader, awsServices Services) (*Cloud, error) {
 		return nil, err
 	}
 
-	valid := isRegionValid(regionName)
-	if !valid {
-		return nil, fmt.Errorf("not a valid AWS zone (unknown region): %s", zone)
+	if !cfg.Global.DisableStrictZoneCheck {
+		valid := isRegionValid(regionName)
+		if !valid {
+			return nil, fmt.Errorf("not a valid AWS zone (unknown region): %s", zone)
+		}
+	} else {
+		glog.Warningf("Strict AWS zone checking is disabled.  Proceeding with zone: %s", zone)
 	}
 
 	ec2, err := awsServices.Compute(regionName)