Context and Problem
Applications serving a global audience need high availability and low-latency access:
- Centralized deployments create performance bottlenecks
- A single-region failure can disrupt services
- Scaling a monolithic deployment is challenging
Solution
Deployment Stamps distribute identical deployments across multiple regions or zones:
- Create a deployment template to standardize infrastructure and application configurations
- Deploy application instances (stamps) in multiple regions or availability zones
- Route users to the nearest or healthiest deployment using a global load balancer
- Implement automated scaling and failover mechanisms
Benefits
- Improved Reliability
- Reduces the risk of regional outages affecting all users
- Low Latency
- Ensures users access services from the closest deployment
- Simplified Scaling
- Enables independent scaling of deployments based on demand
Trade-offs
- Increased Infrastructure Cost
- Requires multiple deployments, leading to higher expenses
- Deployment Coordination
- Ensuring consistency across multiple deployments can be complex
- Data Synchronization Challenges
- Keeping data consistent across multiple regions requires additional strategies
Issues and Considerations
- Load Balancing Complexity
- Routing users efficiently between deployments
- Configuration Management
- Keeping all deployment stamps updated with the latest versions
- Monitoring Overhead
- Tracking multiple distributed instances increases operational complexity
When to Use This Pattern
- Your application needs high availability and fault tolerance
- You have users across different geographic locations
- Scaling needs to be independent for different regions or workloads