Tutorial / Cram Notes

AWS Global Accelerator is a network layer service that helps you improve the availability and performance of your applications to global users. It leverages the AWS global network to direct traffic over the AWS backbone, reducing the number of hops and potentially lowering latency and packet loss. This service is especially useful for workloads that need consistent, single-digit millisecond latency across the globe or when internet conditions are unpredictable.

Key Components of AWS Global Accelerator

To effectively implement AWS Global Accelerator in your architecture, familiarize yourself with its components:

  • Accelerator: This is the resource you create to use the service. It directs traffic to optimal endpoints over the AWS global network.
  • DNS Name: AWS Global Accelerator provides you with a set of static IP addresses that serve as a fixed entry point to your applications.
  • Network Zone: Represents a group of one or more AWS Global Accelerator servers that are each in a distinct data center and is engineered to be isolated from failures in other Network Zones.
  • Listener: Listeners process inbound connections from the accelerator IP addresses, based on the port (or port range) and protocol that you configure.
  • Endpoint group: It is associated with a specific AWS Region and contains one or more endpoints.
  • Endpoint: An endpoint can be an Elastic IP address, a Network Load Balancer (NLB), an Application Load Balancer (ALB), an EC2 instance, or an Elastic Container Service (ECS) service.

Traffic Management Design Patterns with AWS Global Accelerator

Failover and Health Checks

AWS Global Accelerator continuously monitors the health of your application endpoints and redirects traffic to healthy endpoints. Health checks are configured to automatically route traffic away from unhealthy endpoints.

For high availability, you can set up multiple endpoints in different AWS Regions. The Accelerator will perform health checks and route traffic to the next closest available endpoint if the primary fails. Here is an example pattern:

  • Deploy your application in Region A and Region B.
  • Create an endpoint group for each AWS Region with your ALB/NLB as endpoints.
  • AWS Global Accelerator monitors the health of these endpoints using health checks.
  • On detecting a failure in Region A’s endpoints, Global Accelerator routes traffic to Region B.

User Traffic Prioritization

Another pattern involves prioritizing traffic based on endpoint weights. You assign weights to your endpoints to specify the amount of traffic directed to them. Here’s how this can be implemented:

  • If you have two endpoints in an endpoint group, one can be designated to handle 75% of the traffic while the other handles 25%, balancing according to their capacity.

Regional Traffic Dials

Regional traffic dials allow you to control the percentage of your user traffic that is directed to each region. This is especially useful during deployment or for testing in specific regions. An example implementation looks like this:

  • You can direct 10% of traffic to Region A where you have deployed a new version of your application.
  • Monitor the performance and if satisfied, gradually increase the percentage until all traffic is shifted to Region A.

By understanding and applying these design patterns, you can effectively manage global traffic, increase your application’s availability, and reduce latency for your users. Using AWS Global Accelerator in conjunction with other AWS services and architectural best practices can lead to a robust and performant global application infrastructure suitable for passing the AWS Certified Advanced Networking – Specialty (ANS-C01) exam.

Practice Test with Explanation

True or False: AWS Global Accelerator improves global application availability by providing static IP addresses that act as a fixed entry point to your application endpoints in one or more AWS Regions.

  • Answer: True

Explanation: AWS Global Accelerator provides static anycast IP addresses which act as a single fixed entry point to your application and are used to route traffic to the best endpoint based on performance, helping to improve the availability and performance of your applications.

Which design pattern can reduce latency and increase redundancy by routing traffic to the nearest healthy endpoint with the lowest latency?

  • A. Failover
  • B. Geoproximity routing
  • C. Weighted round robin
  • D. Anycast

Answer: B. Geoproximity routing

Explanation: Geoproximity routing allows traffic to be routed to endpoints based on geographic location and can be adjusted to manage how much traffic is routed to each location, helping reduce latency and increase redundancy.

True or False: AWS Global Accelerator only supports TCP traffic, not UDP.

  • Answer: False

Explanation: AWS Global Accelerator supports both TCP and UDP traffic, enabling it to accelerate a wide range of applications.

What is the purpose of the AWS Global Accelerator Client affinity feature?

  • A. To route users to the endpoint that provides the highest capacity.
  • B. To route users to the same endpoint in a specific AWS Region.
  • C. To encrypt user traffic between AWS Regions.
  • D. To distribute traffic evenly across all endpoints.

Answer: B. To route users to the same endpoint in a specific AWS Region.

Explanation: The client affinity feature in AWS Global Accelerator ensures that user requests from a specific client are consistently routed to the same endpoint in an AWS Region, which can be useful for maintaining session continuity.

True or False: AWS Global Accelerator can only be used with AWS services hosted within the AWS public cloud infrastructure.

  • Answer: False

Explanation: While AWS Global Accelerator is optimized for use with AWS services, it can also route traffic to endpoints hosted outside of AWS, such as on-premises datacenters.

AWS Global Accelerator uses which of the following to improve the performance of user traffic?

  • A. AWS backbone network
  • B. Internet Control Message Protocol
  • C. Border Gateway Protocol
  • D. DNS-based routing

Answer: A. AWS backbone network

Explanation: AWS Global Accelerator leverages the AWS global backbone network to route user traffic, which can reduce internet congestion and improve the performance of applications.

True or False: AWS Global Accelerator helps protect your applications against distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks by using AWS Shield.

  • Answer: True

Explanation: AWS Global Accelerator integrates with AWS Shield Standard, providing automatic protections against common, most frequently occurring network and transport layer DDoS attacks.

Which AWS service is primarily used for DNS-based traffic routing and domain management?

  • A. AWS Route 53
  • B. AWS Direct Connect
  • C. AWS Global Accelerator
  • D. AWS Transit Gateway

Answer: A. AWS Route 53

Explanation: AWS Route 53 is a highly available and scalable Domain Name System (DNS) web service that provides DNS-based traffic routing and domain management.

True or False: When using AWS Global Accelerator, traffic between the Global Accelerator edge locations and your application endpoints must traverse the public Internet.

  • Answer: False

Explanation: Traffic between AWS Global Accelerator’s edge locations and the application endpoints in AWS Regions occurs over the AWS global network, which is isolated from the public Internet, providing improved performance and security.

What is the function of listener configurations in AWS Global Accelerator?

  • A. They define access control lists for inbound traffic.
  • B. They specify the range of IP addresses for the accelerator.
  • C. They process incoming connections based on the protocol and port defined.
  • D. They automatically adjust traffic based on real-time congestion and outages.

Answer: C. They process incoming connections based on the protocol and port defined.

Explanation: In AWS Global Accelerator, listeners process incoming connections based on the protocol (TCP or UDP) and the port(s) that you configure, directing traffic to appropriate endpoint groups.

Does AWS Global Accelerator support endpoint groups in multiple AWS Regions for a single accelerator?

  • A. Yes
  • B. No

Answer: A. Yes

Explanation: AWS Global Accelerator allows you to set up endpoint groups in multiple AWS Regions for a single accelerator, enabling global traffic distribution to multiple Regions.

True or False: Modifying an AWS Global Accelerator endpoint group does not incur downtime for the service.

  • Answer: True

Explanation: AWS Global Accelerator allows you to modify your endpoint configurations without taking your applications offline, which means no downtime is incurred when updating endpoint groups.

Interview Questions

What are design patterns for global traffic management, and how can they be applied using AWS Global Accelerator?

Design patterns for global traffic management involve strategies that help distribute user requests across different geographical locations to improve application performance and availability. Using AWS Global Accelerator, these can be applied by directing user traffic to the closest available endpoint by leveraging the AWS global network infrastructure. AWS Global Accelerator optimizes the path using Anycast IP addresses, which routes user traffic to the nearest AWS edge location and then to the best-performing application endpoints within AWS regions.

Can you explain the benefits of using AWS Global Accelerator for managing global traffic compared to traditional DNS-based solutions?

AWS Global Accelerator offers several benefits over traditional DNS-based solutions for global traffic management. Firstly, it uses the AWS global network to route traffic to endpoints, which often provides lower latency and better performance than the public internet. Secondly, it offers instant regional failover since traffic is automatically rerouted to the next closest endpoint with minimal interruption. Thirdly, Global Accelerator provides consistent Anycast IP addresses that do not change, simplifying the management of firewall rules and whitelists.

How would you implement failover for your application in multiple AWS regions using AWS Global Accelerator?

To implement failover with AWS Global Accelerator, you would set up your application in multiple AWS regions and register these as endpoints in an Accelerator. AWS Global Accelerator monitors the health of your endpoints and automatically reroutes traffic from unhealthy endpoints to healthy ones across regions, providing seamless failover.

Can the AWS Global Accelerator improve the performance of applications with a single AWS Region deployment?

Yes, AWS Global Accelerator can still improve the performance of applications with a single AWS Region deployment. This is because Global Accelerator uses the AWS global network to accelerate the user traffic towards the AWS Region where the application is deployed, providing more consistent performance and often lower latency than typical internet connections.

What types of traffic can AWS Global Accelerator handle, and are there any limitations to be aware of?

AWS Global Accelerator can handle TCP and UDP traffic, supporting various applications that use these protocols. However, it’s important to be aware that Global Accelerator does not support other protocols (like ICMP), and there are limits on the number of accelerators and listeners you can create per account, which can be increased upon request.

When would you choose AWS Global Accelerator over Amazon CloudFront, and vice versa?

AWS Global Accelerator is often chosen over CloudFront when a user needs to optimize network paths for non-HTTP use cases, like gaming, IoT, or VoIP. It’s also selected for applications requiring static IP addresses. Amazon CloudFront, on the other side, is more suitable for content delivery network (CDN) use cases when you need to cache static content close to users and provide HTTP/HTTPS acceleration. For dynamic content and global traffic distribution at the TCP/UDP layer, Global Accelerator is the better fit.

How do the health checks in AWS Global Accelerator work, and how do they contribute to global traffic management?

AWS Global Accelerator performs continuous health checks on registered endpoints to monitor their availability. It uses these health checks to determine endpoint health statuses and route traffic only to healthy endpoints. This contributes to global traffic management by ensuring that user traffic is not directed to failed or degraded endpoints, thus maintaining application performance and availability.

Can you explain the pricing model of AWS Global Accelerator, and how does it compare to other AWS services regarding the cost of managing global traffic?

AWS Global Accelerator is priced based on two components: the fixed hourly charge per accelerator and the variable charge based on the volume of data transferred over the Accelerator. This pricing model may compare favorably to other AWS services, like Amazon CloudFront, which is based solely on data transfer and request fees. Organizations may find cost savings with Global Accelerator when the fixed costs are offset by improved performance and reduced data transfer costs from the AWS global network.

What security features does AWS Global Accelerator provide to help manage and secure global traffic?

AWS Global Accelerator provides several security features, including:
– Static Anycast IP addresses, which can simplify the management of firewall rules and provide a consistent entry point to applications.
– Integration with AWS Shield Standard for DDoS protection.
– The ability to integrate with AWS Web Application Firewall (WAF) to filter malicious web traffic.
– The option to configure source IP address preservation for added security and visibility.
– Protected access to your accelerator through AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM).

How does AWS Global Accelerator support the concept of edge computing, and in what scenarios is this particularly beneficial?

AWS Global Accelerator supports edge computing by directing traffic through the AWS global network infrastructure and routing it to the nearest edge location. This reduces the distance that user requests need to travel, decreasing latency, and improving performance. Scenarios where this is particularly beneficial include real-time, latency-sensitive applications like gaming, live streaming, and VoIP services.

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Luca Henry
6 months ago

This blog on AWS Global Accelerator is fantastic. It really helped me understand the traffic management for my upcoming ANS-C01 exam.

Anabel Parra
6 months ago

Thanks for the detailed explanation! This topic was quite confusing for me until now.

Leonel Mendes
6 months ago

Great insights on design patterns for global traffic management. I wonder how AWS Global Accelerator compares to Route 53?

Luke Roberts
6 months ago

Very informative post! Can anyone explain how health checks are integrated with AWS Global Accelerator?

Ian Bennett
6 months ago

Amazing breakdown! How cost-effective is it to use AWS Global Accelerator for global applications?

Magnus Pedersen
5 months ago

This post is exactly what I needed to clear those tricky network questions in the ANS-C01 exam. Thanks a ton!

Babür Tanrıkulu
6 months ago

One of the best resources I’ve found for understanding AWS Global Accelerator and its implications for global traffic management.

Gonzalo Garrido
6 months ago

The comparison between different traffic management tools is really helpful. Which cases specifically require AWS Global Accelerator over other options?

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