In this session, we’ll dive deep into the concept of High Availability (HA) and explore how it benefits both customers and engineers/admins alike. The goal is to equip you with a clear understanding of how to plan and implement a highly available system that ensures uptime and resilience.

We’ll start by distinguishing High Availability from Disaster Recovery—two concepts that often get mixed up but serve different purposes in the realm of system reliability.

Next, we’ll explore various types of High Availability setups, from basic redundancies to more sophisticated failover mechanisms, and walk through the initial planning steps required to design an HA system that suits your needs.

Then, we’ll shift our focus to the core of your application: data. We’ll talk about:

• Best practices for storing and managing files in an HA environment.
• SQL and NoSQL data: What are the differences and considerations when building for high availability?
• How to make your data resilient to failures and ensure it’s always accessible.

Finally, we’ll wrap up with a hypothetical example, followed by a real-world case study of an HA system I’ve architected that’s in production and actively supporting thousands of users.

By the end of this session, you’ll have a solid understanding of how to design, implement, and manage a high-availability solution that keeps your services reliable and your customers happy.