High availability is frequently a design requirement for solutions architects. Highly available architectures eliminate single points of failure keeping businesses running in the presence of unexpected faults.

This challenge assumes knowledge of and familiarity with:

• VPC networking
• Internet gateways
• NAT gateways
• Subnets
• Routes and route tables

If you are unfamiliar with these topics, Cloud Academy strongly recommends that you review the prerequisites before you attempt this challenge.

In this lab challenge, you will be assessing your practical ability to design for high availability and identify single points of failure in a production-like AWS environment. You are presented with a VPC design that you must inspect and ensure it follows best practices and provides high availability. You must resolve the issues that you identify to pass the Challenge. This is a real environment, which means you can prove your knowledge in an applied situation, leaving behind multiple choice questions for a dynamic performance-based exam situation.

Updates

November 3rd, 2021 - Update instructions to use the lab progress rather than the CloudFormation console

August 28th, 2021 - Added check-level hints to provide targeted help with completing the challenge

February 11th, 2021 - Expanded the hints

April 27th, 2020 - Included additional details to provide a narrower scope for the challenge

• AWS VPC and high availability knowledge (completion of the Working with AWS Networking and Amazon VPC course or equivalent is recommended)
• Completion of the Securing your VPC using Public and Private Subnets lab is recommended before attempting this challenge

• AWS Solution Architects and Networking practitioners
• Examinees preparing for AWS Certification exams, particularly, the solutions architect exams

• General AWS Knowledge
• AWS VPC best practices
• Understanding of NAT Gateways
• Knowledge of high availability
• Ability to troubleshoot issues related to the above