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High Availability vs Low Availability

Developers should learn and implement High Availability for critical applications where downtime can lead to significant financial losses, reputational damage, or safety risks, such as in e-commerce platforms, banking systems, healthcare services, and telecommunications meets developers should consider low availability when building systems where occasional failures or downtime have minimal business impact, such as in proof-of-concept projects, staging environments, or internal administrative tools. Here's our take.

🧊Nice Pick

High Availability

Developers should learn and implement High Availability for critical applications where downtime can lead to significant financial losses, reputational damage, or safety risks, such as in e-commerce platforms, banking systems, healthcare services, and telecommunications

High Availability

Nice Pick

Developers should learn and implement High Availability for critical applications where downtime can lead to significant financial losses, reputational damage, or safety risks, such as in e-commerce platforms, banking systems, healthcare services, and telecommunications

Pros

  • +It is essential in cloud-native and distributed systems to handle failures gracefully, ensuring resilience and reliability, and is often required in service-level agreements (SLAs) to meet customer expectations for uninterrupted access
  • +Related to: load-balancing, failover-clustering

Cons

  • -Specific tradeoffs depend on your use case

Low Availability

Developers should consider low availability when building systems where occasional failures or downtime have minimal business impact, such as in proof-of-concept projects, staging environments, or internal administrative tools

Pros

  • +It reduces complexity and costs by avoiding redundant infrastructure, making it suitable for scenarios where rapid iteration or resource constraints are priorities over reliability
  • +Related to: high-availability, fault-tolerance

Cons

  • -Specific tradeoffs depend on your use case

The Verdict

Use High Availability if: You want it is essential in cloud-native and distributed systems to handle failures gracefully, ensuring resilience and reliability, and is often required in service-level agreements (slas) to meet customer expectations for uninterrupted access and can live with specific tradeoffs depend on your use case.

Use Low Availability if: You prioritize it reduces complexity and costs by avoiding redundant infrastructure, making it suitable for scenarios where rapid iteration or resource constraints are priorities over reliability over what High Availability offers.

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The Bottom Line
High Availability wins

Developers should learn and implement High Availability for critical applications where downtime can lead to significant financial losses, reputational damage, or safety risks, such as in e-commerce platforms, banking systems, healthcare services, and telecommunications

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