CompTIA SecurityX (CAS-005)Security ArchitectureMedium
A security architect is designing a highly available and resilient system for a critical financial application that processes millions of transactions daily. The system must tolerate the complete failure of an entire geographic region without data loss or significant service interruption. Which architectural pattern is most effective for achieving this objective?
- ALoad balancing across multiple availability zones in a single region
- BDatabase sharding with eventual consistency
- CActive/Passive clustering within a single data center
- DMulti-region active/active deployment with synchronous data replication
Show answer & explanationAnswer & explanation
Correct answer: D. Multi-region active/active deployment with synchronous data replication
A multi-region active/active deployment with synchronous data replication ensures that if one entire geographic region fails, another region can immediately take over with no data loss, meeting the requirements for high availability and resilience.
Why the other options are wrong
- A. Multiple availability zones within a single region protect against localized failures but not the failure of an entire geographic region.
- B. Eventual consistency can lead to data loss during a regional outage if replication hasn't completed, and sharding primarily addresses scalability, not necessarily resilience across regions.
- C. Active/passive clustering in a single data center does not protect against an entire regional failure.
Geographic Redundancy
The practice of having duplicate critical systems and data in geographically separate locations to ensure continuous operation and data availability in the event of a regional disaster.
- Protects against large-scale outages (e.g., natural disasters).
- Often involves active/active or active/passive deployments across regions.
- Requires robust data replication strategies (synchronous for zero data loss).
Memory trick: Geographic Redundancy: 'Global Resilience' protects your data from any single point of failure.