Home > Articles

Highly Available and Fault-Tolerant Architectures

In this sample chapter from AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate (SAA-C02) Cert Guide, you will explore topics related to exam Domain 1: Design Resilient Architectures, including Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity, Automating AWS Architecture, and Elastic Beanstalk.

This chapter is from the book

This chapter is from the book

AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate (SAA-C02) Cert GuideAWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate (SAA-C02) Cert Guide

Learn More Buy

This chapter is from the book

This chapter is from the book

AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate (SAA-C02) Cert GuideAWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate (SAA-C02) Cert Guide

Learn More Buy

This chapter covers the following topics:

  • Comparing Architecture Designs

  • Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity

  • Automating AWS Architecture

  • Elastic Beanstalk

This chapter covers content that’s important to the following exam domain/objective:

  • Domain 1: Design Resilient Architectures

    Objective 1.2 Design highly available and/or fault-tolerant architectures

The terms high availability and fault tolerant take on unique meanings in today’s hosted cloud. Amazon wants to make sure that you understand how these terms differ in a cloud environment from in on-premises situation. For example, you might be accustomed to using clustering as a common method to protect database data. In the cloud, clustering has been mainly been replaced with horizontal scaling and placing multiple copies of databases in different data centers. You could still build a cluster in the cloud, but there are better ways to achieve high availability and fault tolerance—or at least Amazon and many customers feel there are better ways. Ultimately, no matter the terminology used, your application should be always up and available when the end user needs it. In addition, your data records should always be available. And both your application and your data should be able to handle problems in the backend; you need compute power for the many web servers that are available to take over, and your data needs to be stored in numerous physical locations.

The questions on the AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate (SAA-C02) exam quantify your understanding of the services at AWS that enable you to design your application stacks to be highly available and very fault tolerant.

“Do I Know This Already?” Quiz

The “Do I Know This Already?” quiz allows you to assess whether you should read this entire chapter thoroughly or jump to the “Exam Preparation Tasks” section. If you are in doubt about your answers to these questions or your own assessment of your knowledge of the topics, read the entire chapter. Table 3-1 lists the major headings in this chapter and their corresponding “Do I Know This Already?” quiz questions. You can find the answers in Appendix A, “Answers to the ‘Do I Know This Already?’ Quizzes and Q&A Sections.”

Table 3-1 “Do I Know This Already?” Section-to-Question Mapping

Foundation Topics Section

Questions

Comparing Architecture Designs

1, 2

Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity

3, 4

Automating Architecture

5, 6

Elastic Beanstalk

7, 8

Caution

The goal of self-assessment is to gauge your mastery of the topics in this chapter. If you do not know the answer to a question or are only partially sure of the answer, you should mark that question as wrong for purposes of the self-assessment. Giving yourself credit for an answer you correctly guess skews your self-assessment results and might provide you with a false sense of security.

  1. Which of the following is a characteristic of applications that are designed to be highly available?

    1. Minimal downtime

    2. Increased performance

    3. Higher level of security

    4. Cost-effective operation

  2. Which of the following is a characteristic of applications that are designed with a high level of fault tolerance?

    1. Automatic recovery from most failures

    2. Higher speed

    3. Higher performance

    4. Cost-effective operation

  3. What does the term RPO stand for?

    1. Reliability point objective

    2. Recovery point objective

    3. Restore point objective

    4. Return to an earlier phase of operation

  4. What does the term RTO stand for?

    1. Recovery tier objective

    2. Recovery time objective

    3. The amount of data that will be lost

    4. The time the application will be down

  5. What is the purpose of using CloudFormation?

    1. To recover from failures

    2. To automate the building of AWS infrastructure components

    3. To deploy applications with automation

    4. To document manual tasks

  6. What CloudFormation component is used to check deployment changes to existing infrastructure?

    1. CloudFormation template

    2. Stack

    3. Change set

    4. JSON script

  7. What two components does Elastic Beanstalk deploy?

    1. Infrastructure and storage

    2. Application and infrastructure

    3. Compute and storage

    4. Containers and instances

  8. What term defines application updates that are applied to a new set of EC2 instances?

    1. Rolling

    2. Immutable

    3. All at once

    4. Blue/green

Pearson IT Certification Promotional Mailings & Special Offers

I would like to receive exclusive offers and hear about products from Pearson IT Certification and its family of brands. I can unsubscribe at any time.

Overview


Pearson Education, Inc., 221 River Street, Hoboken, New Jersey 07030, (Pearson) presents this site to provide information about Pearson IT Certification products and services that can be purchased through this site.

This privacy notice provides an overview of our commitment to privacy and describes how we collect, protect, use and share personal information collected through this site. Please note that other Pearson websites and online products and services have their own separate privacy policies.

Collection and Use of Information


To conduct business and deliver products and services, Pearson collects and uses personal information in several ways in connection with this site, including:

Questions and Inquiries

For inquiries and questions, we collect the inquiry or question, together with name, contact details (email address, phone number and mailing address) and any other additional information voluntarily submitted to us through a Contact Us form or an email. We use this information to address the inquiry and respond to the question.

Online Store

For orders and purchases placed through our online store on this site, we collect order details, name, institution name and address (if applicable), email address, phone number, shipping and billing addresses, credit/debit card information, shipping options and any instructions. We use this information to complete transactions, fulfill orders, communicate with individuals placing orders or visiting the online store, and for related purposes.

Surveys

Pearson may offer opportunities to provide feedback or participate in surveys, including surveys evaluating Pearson products, services or sites. Participation is voluntary. Pearson collects information requested in the survey questions and uses the information to evaluate, support, maintain and improve products, services or sites; develop new products and services; conduct educational research; and for other purposes specified in the survey.

Contests and Drawings

Occasionally, we may sponsor a contest or drawing. Participation is optional. Pearson collects name, contact information and other information specified on the entry form for the contest or drawing to conduct the contest or drawing. Pearson may collect additional personal information from the winners of a contest or drawing in order to award the prize and for tax reporting purposes, as required by law.

Newsletters

If you have elected to receive email newsletters or promotional mailings and special offers but want to unsubscribe, simply email information@informit.com.

Service Announcements

On rare occasions it is necessary to send out a strictly service related announcement. For instance, if our service is temporarily suspended for maintenance we might send users an email. Generally, users may not opt-out of these communications, though they can deactivate their account information. However, these communications are not promotional in nature.

Customer Service

We communicate with users on a regular basis to provide requested services and in regard to issues relating to their account we reply via email or phone in accordance with the users' wishes when a user submits their information through our Contact Us form.

Other Collection and Use of Information


Application and System Logs

Pearson automatically collects log data to help ensure the delivery, availability and security of this site. Log data may include technical information about how a user or visitor connected to this site, such as browser type, type of computer/device, operating system, internet service provider and IP address. We use this information for support purposes and to monitor the health of the site, identify problems, improve service, detect unauthorized access and fraudulent activity, prevent and respond to security incidents and appropriately scale computing resources.

Web Analytics

Pearson may use third party web trend analytical services, including Google Analytics, to collect visitor information, such as IP addresses, browser types, referring pages, pages visited and time spent on a particular site. While these analytical services collect and report information on an anonymous basis, they may use cookies to gather web trend information. The information gathered may enable Pearson (but not the third party web trend services) to link information with application and system log data. Pearson uses this information for system administration and to identify problems, improve service, detect unauthorized access and fraudulent activity, prevent and respond to security incidents, appropriately scale computing resources and otherwise support and deliver this site and its services.

Cookies and Related Technologies

This site uses cookies and similar technologies to personalize content, measure traffic patterns, control security, track use and access of information on this site, and provide interest-based messages and advertising. Users can manage and block the use of cookies through their browser. Disabling or blocking certain cookies may limit the functionality of this site.

Do Not Track

This site currently does not respond to Do Not Track signals.

Security


Pearson uses appropriate physical, administrative and technical security measures to protect personal information from unauthorized access, use and disclosure.

Children


This site is not directed to children under the age of 13.

Marketing


Pearson may send or direct marketing communications to users, provided that

  • Pearson will not use personal information collected or processed as a K-12 school service provider for the purpose of directed or targeted advertising.
  • Such marketing is consistent with applicable law and Pearson's legal obligations.
  • Pearson will not knowingly direct or send marketing communications to an individual who has expressed a preference not to receive marketing.
  • Where required by applicable law, express or implied consent to marketing exists and has not been withdrawn.

Pearson may provide personal information to a third party service provider on a restricted basis to provide marketing solely on behalf of Pearson or an affiliate or customer for whom Pearson is a service provider. Marketing preferences may be changed at any time.

Correcting/Updating Personal Information


If a user's personally identifiable information changes (such as your postal address or email address), we provide a way to correct or update that user's personal data provided to us. This can be done on the Account page. If a user no longer desires our service and desires to delete his or her account, please contact us at customer-service@informit.com and we will process the deletion of a user's account.

Choice/Opt-out


Users can always make an informed choice as to whether they should proceed with certain services offered by Adobe Press. If you choose to remove yourself from our mailing list(s) simply visit the following page and uncheck any communication you no longer want to receive: www.pearsonitcertification.com/u.aspx.

Sale of Personal Information


Pearson does not rent or sell personal information in exchange for any payment of money.

While Pearson does not sell personal information, as defined in Nevada law, Nevada residents may email a request for no sale of their personal information to NevadaDesignatedRequest@pearson.com.

Supplemental Privacy Statement for California Residents


California residents should read our Supplemental privacy statement for California residents in conjunction with this Privacy Notice. The Supplemental privacy statement for California residents explains Pearson's commitment to comply with California law and applies to personal information of California residents collected in connection with this site and the Services.

Sharing and Disclosure


Pearson may disclose personal information, as follows:

  • As required by law.
  • With the consent of the individual (or their parent, if the individual is a minor)
  • In response to a subpoena, court order or legal process, to the extent permitted or required by law
  • To protect the security and safety of individuals, data, assets and systems, consistent with applicable law
  • In connection the sale, joint venture or other transfer of some or all of its company or assets, subject to the provisions of this Privacy Notice
  • To investigate or address actual or suspected fraud or other illegal activities
  • To exercise its legal rights, including enforcement of the Terms of Use for this site or another contract
  • To affiliated Pearson companies and other companies and organizations who perform work for Pearson and are obligated to protect the privacy of personal information consistent with this Privacy Notice
  • To a school, organization, company or government agency, where Pearson collects or processes the personal information in a school setting or on behalf of such organization, company or government agency.

Links


This web site contains links to other sites. Please be aware that we are not responsible for the privacy practices of such other sites. We encourage our users to be aware when they leave our site and to read the privacy statements of each and every web site that collects Personal Information. This privacy statement applies solely to information collected by this web site.

Requests and Contact


Please contact us about this Privacy Notice or if you have any requests or questions relating to the privacy of your personal information.

Changes to this Privacy Notice


We may revise this Privacy Notice through an updated posting. We will identify the effective date of the revision in the posting. Often, updates are made to provide greater clarity or to comply with changes in regulatory requirements. If the updates involve material changes to the collection, protection, use or disclosure of Personal Information, Pearson will provide notice of the change through a conspicuous notice on this site or other appropriate way. Continued use of the site after the effective date of a posted revision evidences acceptance. Please contact us if you have questions or concerns about the Privacy Notice or any objection to any revisions.

Last Update: November 17, 2020