High Availability Clustering
High Availability Clustering is a system design approach that groups multiple servers (nodes) together to ensure continuous operation and minimal downtime, even if individual components fail. It uses redundancy, failover mechanisms, and load balancing to maintain service availability, typically achieving 99.9% uptime or higher. This is critical for mission-critical applications where downtime can lead to significant financial or operational losses.
Developers should learn and implement High Availability Clustering when building or maintaining systems that require maximum uptime, such as e-commerce platforms, financial services, healthcare applications, or any service where reliability is paramount. It is essential for disaster recovery, handling peak loads without interruption, and meeting service-level agreements (SLAs) that demand high reliability.