EC2 High Availability (EC2 HA) is a proactive software deployment approach designed to minimise downtime in the event of an Availability Zone (AZ) failure – a rare but very costly occurrence. It creates a safety net by restoring EC2 instances from one subnet to another or restoring from one AZ to another in the event of failure. This process involves restoring the most recent backup of each EC2 instance from a backup vault to a selected subnet in selected AZ.
When managing an organisation, ensuring the continuous operation of customer-facing platforms is vital. However, server failure or corruption, especially in the case of an entire AZ collapse, can presents significant losses financially due to downtime. Server restoration and recovery require an expert to perform a specific sequence of steps to get the server reconfigured to full functionality.
The best course of action is to restore your servers in another subnet or functioning AZ. However, due to the unpredictability of potential failures, a quick fix is a considerable challenge. Failures could occur at any time – even when technical support is unavailable. Even if technical support is sourced, the rush to restore services may inadvertently result in human error, prolonging your downtime. Additionally, the manual effort required to reinstate multiple servers can be time-consuming and costly, potentially impacting your company’s finances and reputation. Even after your servers have been successfully restored, dependencies such as load balancers, Route 53 (DNS records) and Parameter Stores require individual updates and reconfigurations. The post-failure clean-up can become a tedious and error-prone process in itself, especially when executed by someone who is under pressure to prevent downtime.
What if there was an automated solution that would minimise downtime and enable anyone, regardless of their skill level, to initiate the recovery process? Enter Cloud Elemental’s EC2 HA – a reliable solution that ensures seamless continuity of operations even in the face of infrastructure failures. Have no fear, EC2 HA is here!
The entire EC2 HA process is automated with little human intervention required, making it accessible to individuals at any level of technical experience. Our Playbook will guide you through each step, from initiating the process, to receiving notifications at every stage to ensure successful completion. EC2 HA can even be triggered on demand to restore servers whenever necessary, in any given scenario. For example, if your server is somehow corrupted.
The EC2 HA process begins by retrieving the most recent backup of an EC2 instance from the AWS Backup Vault, identifying each instance ID for restoration. If specific EC2 instances need to be restored, you can specify them accordingly. Before proceeding, the process verifies whether the old EC2 instances have been shut down to prevent any duplicate instances from running concurrently, should the failed AZ become operational in the future. This gives you peace of mind and should save a substantial amount of money also!
Once confirmed, the restoration of EC2 instances to another AZ commences, allowing you to specify whether they should be placed in a different subnet. After ensuring that the restored EC2 instances are running and functional, EC2 HA proceeds to inspect the load balancer target groups to check for the presence of old instances. If found, it will deregister the old instances and re-register the new ones. Additionally, it will update Route 53 with the new DNS records so that customer traffic will be redirected to the newly restored servers. After the inspection is complete, EC2 HA will update the Parameter Store with the new EC2 instance ID and IP, alongside any other parameters that require updating.
Upon completion, a SNS notification is sent to confirm the successful execution of EC2 HA. To minimise downtime, EC2 instances can also be restored and run in parallel. Throughout the process, you’ll receive SNS notifications that’ll keep you informed about the function’s progress and status at every step.
To summarise, here are the top 9 reasons why you should invest in Cloud Elemental’s EC2 HA solution:
- Minimal downtime for server restoration
- Reduces financial loss
- Minimal human intervention, preventing human error
- No experience is required to start up – no need to wait for a tech support team
- Restores instances across a wide variety of cases, from server failure or corruption to subnet unavailability, to AZ failure
- Can add Multi-AZ Failover
- Whole process is pre-orchestrated, automated, and event-driven
- Our Playbook guides you through the whole process, step by step
- Can restore servers on-demand whenever necessary
Cloud Elemental want to simplify your Cloud journey. For more information on how we can apply our fully automated EC2 HA process to your unique organisation, get in touch via email, or hit the buttons below for our LinkedIn, X, and Instagram.
