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AWS Solutions Architect · Lesson

Multi-Site Active-Active with Global Tables and Route 53

Run full production capacity in two or more Regions simultaneously using DynamoDB Global Tables, Aurora Global Database, and Route 53 latency routing.

Multi-Site Active-Active Defined

Multi-Site Active-Active is the highest tier of disaster recovery, where your application runs at full production capacity in two or more AWS regions simultaneously. Unlike active-passive where a standby waits to take over, in active-active both regions serve live user traffic at all times. When one region fails, the other absorbs 100% of traffic immediately with no failover delay. This pattern also reduces latency for globally distributed users by serving them from the nearest region.

# Active-Active traffic split (normal operation):
# us-east-1: serving ~50% of users (North America)
# eu-west-1: serving ~50% of users (Europe)

# Active-Active traffic split (us-east-1 failure):
# us-east-1: 0% (health check failed)
# eu-west-1: 100% (ASG scales up automatically)

# RTO: near-zero (DNS TTL propagation only)
# RPO: near-zero (with DynamoDB Global Tables)

DynamoDB Global Tables Architecture

DynamoDB Global Tables is the data backbone of active-active architectures. Global Tables enable multi-master, multi-region replication — applications in any region can read and write to a local DynamoDB table, and changes replicate to all other regions within approximately 1 second. You enable Global Tables by specifying which regions the table should exist in. AWS handles all replication, conflict resolution (last-writer-wins), and failover automatically.

# Create DynamoDB table and add global regions
aws dynamodb create-table \
  --table-name UserSessions \
  --attribute-definitions AttributeName=userId,AttributeType=S \
  --key-schema AttributeName=userId,KeyType=HASH \
  --billing-mode PAY_PER_REQUEST \
  --region us-east-1

# Add replica regions for Global Table
aws dynamodb update-table \
  --table-name UserSessions \
  --replica-updates '[{"Create":{"RegionName":"eu-west-1"}},{"Create":{"RegionName":"ap-southeast-1"}}]' \
  --region us-east-1

All lessons in this course

  1. RTO, RPO, and DR Tiers
  2. Backup and Restore
  3. Pilot Light and Warm Standby
  4. Multi-Site Active-Active with Global Tables and Route 53
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