1. AWS Summit 2014
Architecting Highly Available
Applications on AWS
Alex Sinner
Solutions Architect
@alexsinner

2. Architecting Highly Available Applications on AWS
• ME: Alex Sinner – AWS Solutions Architect
• YOU: Here to learn more about running highly
available, scalable Applications on AWS
• TODAY: about best practices and things to think
about when building for large scale

3. Going from 1 User
to >10 Millions

4. So how do we scale?

5. Hi, I have NO IDEA what I am doing!!

7. a lot of things to read

8. not where we want to start
a lot of things to read

9. Auto Scaling is a tool.
It’s not the single thing that
fixes everything.

10. What do we
need first?

11. Some basics…

12. Regions
US-WEST (Oregon)
EU-WEST (Ireland)
ASIA PAC (Tokyo)
US-WEST (N. California)
SOUTH AMERICA (Sao Paulo)
US-EAST (Virginia)
AWS GovCloud (US)
ASIA PAC (Sydney)
ASIA PAC
(Singapore)
CHINA (Beijing)

13. Availability Zones
US-WEST (Oregon)
EU-WEST (Ireland)
ASIA PAC (Tokyo)
US-WEST (N. California)
SOUTH AMERICA (Sao Paulo)
US-EAST (Virginia)
AWS GovCloud (US)
ASIA PAC (Sydney)
ASIA PAC
(Singapore)
CHINA (Beijing)

14. Compute
Storage
&
Content
Delivery
AWS
Global
Infrastructure
Database
App
Services
Deployment
&
Administra=on
Networking
Service Reference Model

15. Compute
Storage
&
Content
Delivery
AWS
Global
Infrastructure
Database
App
Services
Deployment
&
Administra=on
Networking
Amazon
CloudSearch
Amazon
SQS
Amazon
SNS
Amazon
Elastic
Transcoder
Amazon SWF
Amazon
SES
Amazon
DynamoDB
Amazon
RDS
Amazon
ElastiCache
Amazon
RedShift
AWS Storage
Gateway
Amazon S3
Amazon
Glacier
Amazon
CloudFront
Amazon
CloudWatch AWS IAM AWS
CloudFormation
Amazon Elastic
Beanstalk
AWS
Data
Pipeline
AWS
OpsWorks
AWS
CloudTrail
Amazon
EC2
Amazon
EMR
Amazon
VPC
Amazon
Route 53
AWS
Direct
Connect
Amazon
Kinesis

16. So let’s start from day
one, user one ( you )

17. Day One, User One
• A single EC2 Instance
– With full stack on this host
• Web app
• Database
• Management
• Etc.
• A single Elastic IP
• Route53 for DNS
EC2
Instance
Elastic IP
Amazon
Route 53
User

18. “We’re gonna need a bigger box”
• Simplest approach
• Can now leverage PIOPs
• High I/O instances
• High memory instances
• High CPU instances
• High storage instances
• Easy to change instance sizes
• Will hit an endpoint eventually
i2.4xlarge
m3.xlarge
m1.small

19. “We’re gonna need a bigger box”
• Simplest approach
• Can now leverage PIOPs
• High I/O instances
• High memory instances
• High CPU instances
• High storage instances
• Easy to change instance sizes
• Will hit an endpoint eventually
i2.4xlarge
m3.xlarge
m1.small

20. Day One, User One:
• We could potentially get
to a few hundred to a few
thousand depending on
application complexity
and traffic
• No failover
• No redundancy
• Too many eggs in one
basket
EC2
instance
Elastic IP
address
Amazon
Route 53
User

21. Day One, User One:
• We could potentially get
to a few hundred to a few
thousand depending on
application complexity
and traffic
• No failover
• No redundancy
• Too many eggs in one
basket
EC2
instance
Elastic IP
address
Amazon
Route 53
User

22. Day Two, User >1:
First, let’s separate out
our single host into
more than one:
• Web
• Database
– Make use of a database
service?
Web
instance
Database
instance
Elastic IP
address
Amazon
Route 53
User

23. Self-Managed Fully-Managed
Database server
on Amazon EC2
Your choice of
database running on
Amazon EC2
Bring Your Own
License (BYOL)
Amazon
DynamoDB
Managed NoSQL
database service
using SSD storage
Seamless scalability
Zero administration
Amazon RDS
Microsoft SQL,
Oracle, MySQL or
PostgreSQL as a
managed service
Flexible licensing
BYOL or License
Included
Amazon
Redshift
Massively parallel,
petabyte-scale, data
warehouse service
Fast, powerful and
easy to scale
Database Options

24. But how do I choose
what DB technology I
need? SQL? NoSQL?

25. Some people won’t
like this. But…

26. Start with SQL
databases

27. Why start with SQL?
• Established and well-worn technology
• Lots of existing code, communities, books, background,
tools, etc.
• You aren’t going to break SQL DBs in your first 10 million
users. No really, you won’t*.
• Clear patterns to scalability
* Unless you are manipulating data at MASSIVE scale; even then, SQL will have a
place in your stack

28. AH HA! You
said “massive
amounts”, I
will have
massive
amounts!

29. If your usage is such that you will be
generating several TB of data in the
first year OR have an incredibly
data-intensive workload… you might
need NoSQL

30. Regardless, why NoSQL?
• Super low latency applications
• Metadata driven datasets
• Highly non-relational data
• Need schema-less data constructs*
• Massive amounts of data (again, in the TB range)
• Rapid ingest of data ( thousands of records/sec )
• Already have skilled staff
*Need != “it is easier to do dev without schemas”

31. But back to the main
path… Let’s see how
far SQL at the core
can grow

32. User >100
First let’s separate out
our single host into
more than one
• Web
• Database
– Use RDS to make your life
easier
Web
Instance
Elastic IP
RDS DB
Instance
Amazon
Route 53
User

33. User > 1000
Next let’s address our
lack of failover and
redundancy issues
• Elastic Load Balancing
• Another web instance
– In another Availability Zone
• Enable Amazon RDS multi-AZ
Web
Instance
RDS DB Instance
Active (Multi-AZ)
Availability Zone Availability Zone
Web
Instance
RDS DB Instance
Standby (Multi-AZ)
Elastic Load
Balancing
Amazon
Route 53
User

34. Scaling this horizontally
and vertically
will get us pretty far
( 10s-100s of thousands )

35. User >10 ks–100 ks
RDS DB Instance
Active (Multi-AZ)
Availability Zone Availability Zone
RDS DB Instance
Standby (Multi-AZ)
Elastic Load
Balancing
RDS DB Instance
Read Replica
RDS DB Instance
Read Replica
RDS DB Instance
Read Replica
RDS DB Instance
Read Replica
Web
Instance
Web
Instance
Web
Instance
Web
Instance
Web
Instance
Web
Instance
Web
Instance
Web
Instance
Amazon
Route 53
User

36. Shift some load around:
Let’s lighten the load on our
web and database
instances:
• Move static content from the
web instance to Amazon S3
and CloudFront
• Move dynamic content from
the load balancer to
CloudFront
• Move session/state and DB
caching to ElastiCache or
Amazon DynamoDB
Web
instance
RDS DB Instance
Active (Multi-AZ)
Availability Zone
Elastic Load
Balancer
Amazon S3
Amazon
CloudFront
Amazon
Route 53
User
ElastiCache
Amazon
DynamoDB

37. Now let’s revisit the
beginning of our talk…

38. Auto Scaling!

39. Automatic resizing of compute clusters
based on demand
Trigger auto-scaling policy
Feature
Details
Control
Define
minimum
and
maximum
instance
pool
sizes
and
when
scaling
and
cool
down
occurs
Integrated
to
Amazon
CloudWatch
Use
metrics
gathered
by
CloudWatch
to
drive
scaling
Instance
types
Run
Auto
Scaling
for
On-­‐Demand
and
Spot
Instances;
compa=ble
with
VPC
aws
autoscaling
create-­‐auto-­‐scaling-­‐
group
-­‐-­‐auto-­‐scaling-­‐group-­‐name
MyGroup
-­‐-­‐launch-­‐configuration-­‐name
MyConfig
-­‐-­‐min-­‐size
4
-­‐-­‐max-­‐size
200
-­‐-­‐availability-­‐zones
us-­‐west-­‐2c
Auto Scaling
Amazon
CloudWatch

40. Auto Scaling can scale from
one instance to thousands
and back down

41. User >500k+:
Availability Zone
Amazon
Route 53
User
Amazon S3
Amazon
CloudFront
Availability Zone
Elastic Load
Balancing
Amazon
DynamoDBRDS DB Instance
Read Replica
Web
instance
Web
instance
Web
instance
ElastiCache RDS DB Instance
Read Replica
Web
instance
Web
instance
Web
instance
ElastiCacheRDS DB Instance
Standby (Multi-AZ)
RDS DB Instance
Active (Multi-AZ)

42. ARCHITECTING DATA-DRIVEN
MASS PRODUCED VIDEO
AWS SUMMIT 2014 | JUNE 10, 2014

43. JASPER JAGER
SENIOR DEVELOPER AND AWS ARCHITECT
REDNUN, AMSTERDAM

44. THIS IS WHAT WE DO
‣ Automatically mass produce data-driven, personalised or profiled video
‣ ING, KLM, Essent België, T-Mobile
‣ Run everything in AWS

46. ‣ Small campaign, 25.000 personalised videos
‣ Self hosted 3x 8 core Xserves with 96GB RAM
‣ 300 videos an hour
HOW WE STARTED

47. PROBLEMS WITH THE OLD IN-
HOUSE SETUP
‣ 250.000 videos would take us 35 days
‣ Or we would have to buy more hardware
‣ Systems which would idle most of the time
‣ Storing and serving all videos - HELP

48. REBUILD REDNUN IN
THE CLOUD
‣ Ability to start 100’s of machines, based on preconfigured AMI
‣ High availability for our campaign sites, behind load balancers
‣ Big campaign, big Dutch lottery, 1.200.000
‣ Batched, pre-rendered videos, stored on S3
‣ Took us just a couple of days

49. SECOND INFRASTRUCTURE

50. AUTOSCALE EVERYTHING
‣ Automated daily flows, welcome video, birthday video etc.
‣ API, videos can be produced on the fly
‣ Autoscaling based on Cloudwatch metrics for web and app servers
‣ Custom autoscaling scripts for video rendering
‣ Use spot instances when available

51. LOOSE COUPLING
‣ Decoupled components
‣ Use SQS as a buffer
‣ Continuous monitoring and adjusting

52. AUTOMATE EVERYTHING
‣ Cloudformation and Opsworks
‣ Flexibility to start environment in different region
‣ Dev and QA environments

53. CURRENT INFRASTRUCTURE

54. THE THINGS WE’VE
LEARNED
‣ AWS service limits
‣ Autoscale on Cloudwatch or custom metrics
‣ Automate your infrastructure
‣ AWS can help you scale with ease

55. JASPER@REDNUN.NL
WWW.REDNUN.NL

56. On Tools:
Managing your infrastructure will become an ever
increasing important part of your time. Use tools to
automate repetitive tasks.
• Tools to manage AWS resources – AWS CloudFormation
• Tools to manage software and configuration on your
instances – AWS OpsWorks
• Automated data analysis of logs and user actions

57. User >500k+:
You’ll potentially start to run into issues with speed and
performance of your applications:
• Have monitoring/metrics/logging in place
– If you can’t build it internally, outsource it! (3rd party SaaS)
• Pay attention to what customers are saying works well
• Squeeze as much performance as you can out of each
service/component

58. HOST
LEVEL
METRICS
AGGREGATE
LEVEL
METRICS
LOG
ANALYSIS
EXTERNAL
SITE
PERFORMANCE

59. Not having proper monitoring/
metrics is like flying a plane
with an eye mask on in a
thunderstorm.
Oh, and your wing is on fire.

61. AWS Marketplace & Partners Can Help
• Customer can find, research,
and buy software
• Simple pricing, aligns with
Amazon EC2 usage model
• Launch in minutes
• AWS Marketplace billing
integrated into your AWS
account
• 1300+ products across 20+
categories
Learn more at: aws.amazon.com/marketplace

62. There are further
improvements to be
made in breaking apart
our web/app layer

64. SOA = Service Oriented Architecture

65. SOA’ing
Move services into their own tiers/
modules. Treat each of these as
100% separate pieces of your
infrastructure and scale them
independently.
Amazon.com and AWS do this
extensively! It offers flexibility and
greater understanding of each
component.

66. Loose coupling sets you free!
• The looser they're coupled, the bigger they scale
– Independent components
– Design everything as a black box
– Decouple interactions
– Favor services with built-in redundancy and scalability rather than
building your own
Controller
A
Controller
B
Controller
A
Controller
B
Q
Q
Tight
coupling
Use
Amazon
SQS
for
buffers
Loose
coupling

67. Loose coupling + SOA = winning
Examples:
• Email
• Queuing
• Transcoding
• Search
• Databases
• Monitoring
• Metrics
• Logging
Amazon
CloudSearch
Amazon SQSAmazon SNS
Amazon Elastic
Transcoder
Amazon SWF
Amazon SES
In the early days, if someone has a service for it already,
opt to use that instead of building it yourself.
DON’T RE-INVENT THE WHEEL

68. On re-inventing the wheel…
If you find yourself writing
your own: queue, DNS server,
database, storage system,
monitoring tool

69. Take a deep breath and
stop it. Now.

70. Back to SOA

71. Users > 1 Million
RDS DB Instance
Active (Multi-AZ)
Availability Zone
Elastic Load
Balancer
RDS DB Instance
Read Replica
RDS DB Instance
Read Replica
Web
Instance
Web
Instance
Web
Instance
Web
Instance
Amazon
Route 53
User
Amazon S3
Amazon
Cloudfront
Amazon
DynamoDB
Amazon SQS
ElastiCache
Worker
Instance
Worker
Instance
Amazon
CloudWatch
Internal App
Instance
Internal App
Instance
Amazon SES

72. The next big steps

73. From 5 to 10 Million Users
You may start to run into issues with your database around
contention on the write master.
How can you solve it?
• Federation - splitting into multiple DBs based on function
• Sharding - splitting one data set up across multiple hosts
• Moving some functionality to other types of DBs (NoSQL)

74. …and there you have it.
10 Million

75. A Quick Review

76. Review
• Multi-AZ your infrastructure
• Make use of self-scaling services
– Elastic Load Balancing, Amazon S3, Amazon SNS, Amazon SQS,
Amazon SWF, Amazon SES, etc.
• Build in redundancy at every level
• Most likely start with SQL
• Cache data both inside and outside your
infrastructure
• Use automation tools in your infrastructure

77. Review (cont)
• Make sure you have good metrics/monitoring/
logging tools in place
• Split tiers into individual services (SOA)
• Use Auto Scaling when you’re ready for it
• Don’t reinvent the wheel
• Move to NoSQL when it really makes sense but
do your best not to administer it

78. Putting all this together
means we should now
easily be able to handle
10+ million users!

79. To infinity…..

80. Thank You!
AWS EXPERT?
GET CERTIFIED!
aws.amazon.com/certification
Alex Sinner
Solutions Architect
@alexsinner