Chapter 13: Availability, Reliability, and Scalability Patterns

In Chapter 4, Harnessing the Power of Cloud Computing, we saw how some characteristics of the cloud, such as elasticity, make the cloud so powerful. Having the ability to start instances on demand when they are needed and shut them down as soon as the demand subsides makes the cloud cost-effective and powerful. Because of the elasticity of the cloud, we can programmatically implement systems that are highly available, offer high reliability, and can be automatically scaled up and down quickly.

In this chapter, we will explore in depth the concepts of availability, reliability, and scalability and why understanding them in depth is critical to the success of all your projects. We will also learn which AWS services can be used to make your applications highly available, fault-tolerant, and massively scalable. By the end of this chapter, you will have the confidence to choose the right service for your individual use cases...