High Availability for Web Applications on AWS: Ensuring Continuity even if EC2 Instances Crash

Ensuring High Availability for Your Web Application on AWS

Question

You are planning to serve a web application on the AWS Platform by using EC2 Instances.

Which of the below principles would you adopt to ensure that even if some of the EC2 Instances crash, you still have a working application?

Answers

Explanations

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A. B. C. D.

Answer - D.

A fault-tolerant system is one that ensures that the entire system works as expected, even there are issues.

For more information on designing fault-tolerant applications in AWS, please refer to the below URL:

https://d1.awsstatic.com/whitepapers/aws-building-fault-tolerant-applications.pdf?did=wp_card&trk=wp_card https://aws.amazon.com/premiumsupport/knowledge-center/autoscaling-fault-tolerance-load-balancer/ https://aws.amazon.com/whitepapers/?whitepapers-main.sort-by=item.additionalFields.sortDate&whitepapers-main.sort-order=desc

To ensure that a web application is always available and functional, it is essential to adopt a fault-tolerant system that can handle potential failures. A fault-tolerant system is designed to continue operating even if some of its components fail. Therefore, the answer to this question is D, using a fault-tolerant system.

EC2 instances are virtual servers that can be launched and terminated as required, and they can run a wide range of applications. However, they are prone to failure due to factors such as hardware issues, software crashes, or network disruptions. To ensure that a web application hosted on EC2 instances continues to function even when some instances fail, a fault-tolerant system is necessary.

A fault-tolerant system is built with redundant components and mechanisms that can detect and handle failures quickly. In the case of EC2 instances, a fault-tolerant system could include:

  1. Auto Scaling groups - Auto Scaling groups allow you to launch multiple EC2 instances in different Availability Zones within a region. This approach ensures that if one instance fails, the others can still handle the incoming traffic.

  2. Load Balancers - Load balancers can distribute incoming traffic to multiple EC2 instances, ensuring that the workload is evenly distributed. If one instance fails, the load balancer can redirect traffic to other instances.

  3. Elastic IPs - Elastic IPs are static IP addresses that can be assigned to EC2 instances. If an instance fails, you can quickly reassign the Elastic IP to another instance, ensuring that the application is still accessible from the same IP address.

  4. Multi-AZ RDS instances - If your web application relies on a database, using a multi-AZ RDS instance can help ensure that your data remains available even if the primary database instance fails. Multi-AZ RDS creates a secondary database instance in a different Availability Zone, ensuring that data is replicated in near-real-time.

In conclusion, a fault-tolerant system is necessary to ensure that a web application hosted on EC2 instances is always available and functional, even if some instances fail. By adopting a fault-tolerant system with redundant components and mechanisms, you can ensure that your web application remains accessible and operational, which is crucial for maintaining user satisfaction and minimizing downtime.