Developing Solutions for Microsoft Azure (AZ-204) Practice Exam

To enhance your system's availability, which guiding principle should you follow?

1. Reduce the target for maximum duration of acceptable data loss

2. Encrypt all data at rest

3. Eliminate single point of failure

4. Increase the number of databases in use

The correct answer is: Eliminate single point of failure

To enhance your system's availability, it is crucial to eliminate single points of failure. A single point of failure refers to a component in your system whose failure would lead to the entire system becoming unavailable. By identifying and removing these vulnerabilities, you create a more resilient architecture that can tolerate component failures without affecting the overall functionality. An effective way to achieve this is by implementing redundancy through multiple instances of critical components, such as servers, databases, or network paths. This ensures that if one component fails, others can take over without disrupting service. Various strategies can be employed, such as load balancing across multiple servers or using failover mechanisms, which automatically switch to standby components in case an active one goes down. In contrast, reducing the target for maximum duration of acceptable data loss primarily focuses on your backup and recovery strategy rather than availability. Encrypting data at rest is essential for security, but it does not directly relate to availability. Increasing the number of databases may provide some redundancy, but without a cohesive approach to eliminate single points of failure, this strategy may not ensure that the overall system is available when needed. Thus, focusing on eliminating single points of failure is the most effective principle for enhancing system availability.