Design principles for architectural reliability
Reliability and high availability (HA) are foundational pillars for ensuring that applications and infrastructure can meet user demands without interruption. Reliability focuses on the system’s ability to operate correctly under specific conditions and for a particular period.
It involves designing systems to contain and manage failures in the smallest scope possible, minimizing the impact on overall operations. This approach requires a comprehensive understanding of potential failure modes and implementing targeted mitigation strategies to either prevent these failures or recover gracefully from them.
HA, discussed in detail in Chapter 2, is closely related to reliability but with an emphasis on ensuring that services remain accessible at all times. HA strategies involve creating redundant systems and components to eliminate single points of failure, thereby allowing for seamless failover in case of an outage. The goal...