Question

Difficulty: MediumResilience, High Availability, and Redundancy

A security architect is designing a high-availability solution for a critical authentication service distributed across two geographically separated cloud availability zones. The solution must support dynamic redirection of client traffic during an outage and ensure zero data loss for active user sessions during a database failover. Which of the following technical controls should be included in the design to meet these resilience requirements? (Select TWO.)

  1. Synchronous data replication between database instances across both availability zonesAnswer
  2. Health probes combined with global server load balancing to dynamically reroute client requestsAnswer
  3. C
    RAID 6 disk arrays configured on host storage drives within each database server node
  4. D
    Automated daily differential tape backups transferred to an offsite cold storage facility

Answer

Synchronous data replication across availability zones and health probes combined with global server load balancing.
High availability across separate availability zones requires both data synchronization and automated traffic routing. Synchronous replication ensures that data is committed across nodes simultaneously so no transaction state is lost during an unexpected failure. Integrated health probes and load balancing allow the system to continuously monitor endpoint health and reroute user traffic seamlessly to operational instances without human intervention.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Analyze the requirement for zero data loss during database failover.
Identified that synchronous replication is required because asynchronous or snapshot backups leave a time gap where uncommitted data can be lost.
Synchronous replication ensures that a write operation is confirmed only after being written to both primary and secondary nodes.
2
Analyze the requirement for dynamic redirection of client traffic during a zone outage.
Identified load balancers integrated with automated health probes as the appropriate network control.
Health probes detect node unresponsiveness in real time and automatically divert incoming connections to active nodes.
3
Evaluate distractors based on redundancy and backup misconceptions.
Eliminated local RAID storage and daily offsite backups as unsuitable for real-time site failover and zero data loss.
Local storage redundancy protects only against physical drive failure on a single machine, while offsite backups are a slow restoration process.

Key Concept

High Availability Infrastructure Controls and Fault Tolerance Mechanisms
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