Zenn
📝

What is Pilot Light?

2024/05/25に公開
AWS
dr
idea

This blog is the English version of the following blog.
https://zenn.dev/mn87/articles/e417121016235c

AWS official

REL 13. How do you plan for disaster recovery (DR)? - AWS Well-Architected Framework

Pilot light (RPO in minutes, RTO in tens of minutes): Provision a copy of your core workload infrastructure in the recovery Region. Replicate your data into the recovery Region and create backups of it there. Resources required to support data replication and backup, such as databases and object storage, are always on. Other elements such as application servers or serverless compute are not deployed, but can be created when needed with the necessary configuration and application code.

It seems that instead of always running a secondary system in another location like hot standby, only the minimal core components are kept on standby.

AWS Black Belt Online Seminar AWSで実現するDisaster Recovery | PPT

It appears that methods such as using AMI and CloudFormation, or stopping the EC2 instance itself, are used to avoid unnecessary costs during normal operation while being prepared to launch the instance immediately in case of a failure.

Others

AWS　耐障害性と高可用性 - Qiita

パイロットライト：停止した状態のサーバーを別のリージョンに用意しておき、障害発生時に立ち上げる。

AWS 上でのディザスタリカバリ (DR) 構成 4 パターン - michimani.net

DR 用にスペックの低い DB を起動しておいて、通常時はデータの同期のみを行います。障害発生時には、 DR 用のリージョンでアプリケーションを起動し、 DB のスペックを上げて対応します。そして元のリージョンの復旧作業を行います。

Summary

This time, I looked into the Pilot Light strategy in the context of disaster recovery (DR) on AWS.
Here are the key points:

  • In preparation for failures, only the minimal core components are kept on standby in another region or location.
  • Utilize AMI and CloudFormation.
  • Normally, the standby EC2 instances are stopped and are only started in the event of a failure.

It's a method to prepare for failures while optimizing costs.
Although the content was simple, I hope it can be helpful to someone.

PS

It's explained in detail on the official blog.
Disaster Recovery (DR) Architecture on AWS, Part III: Pilot Light and Warm Standby | AWS Architecture Blog

References

Discussion