Question

Difficulty: MediumResilience, High Availability, and Redundancy

A security architect is establishing high availability guidelines for enterprise infrastructure. Which architectural control specification best matches each resilience technology?

  • NIC TeamingCombines multiple physical network adapters into a single logical interface to provide link-level fault tolerance.
  • Geographic DispersalProvisions system components across geographically distinct facilities to maintain operations during wide-area disaster events.
  • Active-Passive ClusteringDirects application traffic to a primary operational node while maintaining an idle secondary node that assumes processing upon failure.
  • Multipath I/O (MPIO)Configures redundant physical communication paths between host bus adapters and storage arrays to prevent storage access failure.

Answer

NIC Teaming matches adapter-level link aggregation; Geographic Dispersal matches distribution across geographically separate facilities; Active-Passive Clustering matches a primary active node with an idle standby node; Multipath I/O matches redundant physical paths between server hardware and storage arrays.
Each high-availability control is mapped to its appropriate architectural scope: NIC Teaming operates at the network interface layer, Geographic Dispersal mitigates site-level operational risks, Active-Passive Clustering manages compute failover using a dedicated standby node, and Multipath I/O ensures continuous storage fabric availability.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Identify network interface redundancy controls
Match NIC Teaming to the aggregation of physical network interfaces for adapter failover.
NIC Teaming specifically handles network interface card and link redundancy.
2
Identify site-level resilience mechanisms
Associate Geographic Dispersal with distributing assets across separate physical regions.
Physical separation protects against wide-area site outages.
3
Evaluate high-availability cluster failover modes
Map Active-Passive Clustering to the configuration where a standby secondary node waits for primary node failure.
Active-passive nodes do not process active workloads simultaneously.
4
Analyze storage bus interface redundancy mechanisms
Link Multipath I/O (MPIO) to redundant hardware channels between host servers and SAN storage controllers.
MPIO protects against storage bus, Fibre Channel HBA, or cable disruptions.

Key Concept

High Availability and Infrastructure Redundancy Controls
Estimated Time:1m 30s
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