AWS Global Accelerator can be used effectively for both high availability and disaster recovery, providing detailed features and mechanisms to support these critical aspects of application resilience.
High Availability with AWS Global Accelerator
AWS Global Accelerator enhances high availability by providing a fault-isolating design that increases the availability of your application. When you create an accelerator, you receive two static IPv4 addresses serviced by independent network zones, which are isolated units with their own physical infrastructure and unique IP subnets. If one static IP address becomes unavailable-due to IP blocking or network disruptions-Global Accelerator reroutes traffic to the healthy static IP address in the other isolated zone. This setup ensures fault tolerance at the network level and protects your application from single points of failure[3][4][5].
Global Accelerator continuously monitors the health of all endpoints using TCP, HTTP, and HTTPS health checks. If an endpoint becomes unhealthy, it instantly directs traffic to another healthy endpoint, maintaining application availability without client disruption. This health monitoring and instant failover capability allow you to create a highly available architecture across multiple Availability Zones or Regions[3][5][6].
Additionally, Global Accelerator eliminates variability caused by client-side DNS caching because it provides fixed static IP addresses. Changes in routing or endpoint health status propagate within seconds, minimizing downtime and ensuring consistent availability for end users[5].
Disaster Recovery and Multi-Region Resiliency
Global Accelerator supports disaster recovery by enabling multi-Region deployments with automatic failover. You can associate application endpoints across multiple AWS Regions with the static IP addresses provided by Global Accelerator. If the primary Region experiences an outage or endpoint failure, Global Accelerator detects the unhealthy endpoints and automatically redirects traffic to the next optimal and healthy Region. This failover happens rapidly-typically within less than a minute-ensuring minimal disruption and continued service availability[5][7][10].
This multi-Region failover capability is critical for disaster recovery scenarios, where applications must remain accessible even if an entire Region becomes unavailable. Global Acceleratorâs ability to route traffic to the closest available endpoint also helps reduce latency and improve performance during failover, enhancing user experience[7][10].
Additional Benefits Supporting High Availability and Disaster Recovery
- Global static anycast IP addresses: Provide a single fixed entry point for your applications, simplifying client configuration and firewall rules[6].
- Network zones and cell-based architecture: Limit the impact of failures within the Global Accelerator infrastructure itself, enhancing operational resiliency[6].
- Integration with AWS Shield: Protects your application endpoints from Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks, which could otherwise affect availability[7].
- Easy endpoint management: You can add or remove endpoints, perform blue/green deployments, or A/B testing without changing client-facing IP addresses, facilitating smooth updates and recovery operations[7][10].
Summary
AWS Global Accelerator is designed to improve both high availability and disaster recovery for applications by:
- Providing static IP addresses serviced by independent network zones for fault tolerance.
- Continuously monitoring endpoint health and routing traffic away from unhealthy endpoints.
- Supporting multi-Region failover with near-instantaneous traffic redirection.
- Reducing latency by routing user traffic to the closest healthy endpoint.
- Offering robust protection and operational resiliency features.
These capabilities make Global Accelerator a powerful tool for building resilient, highly available, and disaster-tolerant applications on AWS[3][5][7][10].
Citations:
[1] https://aws.amazon.com/global-accelerator/features/
[2] https://docs.aws.amazon.com/global-accelerator/latest/dg/disaster-recovery-resiliency.html
[3] https://docs.aws.amazon.com/global-accelerator/latest/dg/introduction-how-it-works.html
[4] https://aws.amazon.com/global-accelerator/faqs/
[5] https://tutorialsdojo.com/aws-global-accelerator/
[6] https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/networking-and-content-delivery/maximising-application-resiliency-with-aws-global-accelerator/
[7] https://docs.aws.amazon.com/global-accelerator/latest/dg/introduction-benefits-of-migrating.html
[8] https://www.projectpro.io/recipes/explain-features-of-aws-global-accelerator
[9] https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/cloud-adoption-framework/scenarios/oracle-iaas/oracle-disaster-recovery-iaas
[10] https://cloudchipr.com/blog/aws-global-accelerator
[11] https://hands-on.cloud/aws-services/global-accelerator/