Cloud Chronicles, Part 3: Growing the Reach – Strengthening the Roots

Application availability means being ready and open to receive traffic. It means users don’t have to wonder about if they can reach the application or site that they need, and when they get there, they don’t have to wait an inordinate amount of time for that application or site to respond.

Everything from accessing an application to sending an email or launching a video call starts with a DNS request. When dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of users want to access the same application at the same time, keeping that application online and available can be tricky. To do that, the teams that manage these applications need tools that can scale with demand to prevent waves of traffic from rendering an app unreachable. This isn’t always easy though, when considering factors like hardware limitations, resource usage, and even cost spikes that correspond with traffic spikes. A consistent solution that scales with application traffic should be on every NetOps or DevOps team’s wish list to ensure that there’s never a question about whether an application can handle a traffic rush.

It’s well accepted that beyond just making sure an app is available, teams need to ensure that those apps can stand up to attacks, outages, and other events that could knock a crucial service offline. This means developing an app delivery strategy that avoids single points of failure. When teams leverage a diversified, globally distributed network, one hosting dozens of points of presence, users shouldn’t notice much of a difference at all in their application experience, even if the original instance of the app they requested is knocked offline.

In a single-point-of-failure scenario, any issue in the central server could lead to a complete service outage. An application fronted by a cloud service that lives on multiple points of presence, however, enjoys a higher level of resiliency. If one node goes down, traffic reroutes to the next nearest operational node in the network, maintaining continuous availability of that application service. This capability is especially crucial for disaster recovery and business continuity, ensuring that regional outages do not disrupt an entire service.

There is also a significant security component to consider with respect to this setup. A network built with distributed, decentralized nodes can better absorb and mitigate volumetric attacks by spreading attack traffic, protecting core infrastructure. Each node can also implement region-specific security measures, addressing local threats more effectively and adhering to regional compliance requirements. 

The infrastructure underpinning an application network also deserves to be built on the highest-quality, highest-performing, most secure foundation possible. A house is only as strong as its foundation; an application delivery strategy is no different. Building and hosting a critical application but delivering it with an unreliable, low-performance network means that application is already behind the curve before it even goes public.

Teams that support these critical applications deserve an infrastructure that is up to the task of handling all manner of traffic (good, bad, or otherwise). They deserve infrastructure that not only supports their applications but works as a value-add, giving them visibility into critical traffic metrics as well as the ability to scale to meet demand.