Tutorial / Cram Notes

AWS Global Accelerator directs user traffic to the optimal endpoint using the AWS global network infrastructure. By routing user requests through the AWS backbone network, Global Accelerator improves internet user performance by an average of up to 60%. It automatically reacts to changes in users’ location, internet health, and your application health to route user traffic along the best path.

How AWS Global Accelerator Works

AWS Global Accelerator improves the performance and availability of your applications by providing:

  • Static AnyCast IP addresses: These are fixed entry points for your applications hosted in one or more AWS Regions.
  • Intelligent traffic routing: This sends users’ traffic through the AWS global network infrastructure to the closest available application endpoint.
  • Health Checks: Constant checks are done on your application endpoints to ensure they are up and track their performance. If one endpoint fails, Global Accelerator reroutes traffic to the nearest healthy endpoint.

Benefits of Using AWS Global Accelerator

  • Improved application performance and user experience
  • Higher availability and resilience
  • Decreased latency
  • Simplified management of IP address whitelists
  • Consistent application traffic control

Setting Up AWS Global Accelerator

To set up Global Accelerator, you would follow these steps:

  1. Create an Accelerator: This is the resource you use to direct traffic to your optimal endpoints.
  2. Define listeners: These are the ports that Global Accelerator will use to listen for incoming traffic for your applications.
  3. Add endpoint groups: Organize your endpoints logically, often by AWS Region.
  4. Register endpoints: Your actual endpoints where the application is hosted – these can be Elastic IP addresses, Network Load Balancers (NLB), or Application Load Balancers (ALB).

Example Use Case

Consider an e-commerce company with users globally and its web application hosted in AWS Regions in North America and Europe. During high traffic events like Black Friday, the company must ensure that all users get the best possible performance and availability.

By implementing AWS Global Accelerator, user traffic is intelligently routed to the closest region with the lowest latency. If there’s an unexpected outage in one region, traffic is automatically routed to the next available region, minimizing disruptions.

Performance and Application Availability Comparison

Feature Without Global Accelerator With Global Accelerator
IP Management Complex, multiple IPs needed per region Simple, static Anycast IP addresses
Performance Variable, depends on public internet paths Optimized via AWS global network
Availability / Resilience Dependent on a single region’s health Traffic shifted to healthy regions automatically
Latency Higher, due to longer routes Lower, due to optimized routing
Management Tricky, requires DNS-level traffic management Simplified, via a centralized console

In summary, AWS Global Accelerator is an essential service for optimizing network connectivity and improving network performance and application availability. It provides a suite of tools to ensure that users worldwide have a seamless and responsive experience when accessing your applications, which is paramount for businesses operating at a global scale. Its implementation can make a significant impact, particularly for latency-sensitive and mission-critical applications, and can be a topic of interest for professionals taking the AWS Certified Advanced Networking – Specialty (ANS-C01) exam.

Practice Test with Explanation

True or False: AWS Global Accelerator works by providing a set of static IP addresses that are used to access application endpoints in one or more AWS Regions.

Answer: True

Explanation: AWS Global Accelerator improves the availability and performance of your applications by providing static anycast IP addresses that act as a fixed entry point to your application endpoints in a single or multiple AWS Regions.

Which of the following AWS services does Global Accelerator integrate with? (Select two)

  • A. Amazon EC2
  • B. AWS Elastic Beanstalk
  • C. Amazon Route 53
  • D. AWS Direct Connect

Answer: A and B

Explanation: AWS Global Accelerator can direct traffic to EC2 instances and Elastic Beanstalk environments, among other AWS resources. It does not directly integrate with Route 53 or Direct Connect but can work alongside them in a broader architecture.

True or False: AWS Global Accelerator can help reduce latency by leveraging the AWS global network infrastructure.

Answer: True

Explanation: AWS Global Accelerator improves application performance by routing user traffic through AWS’s global network infrastructure, which optimizes paths to the application’s endpoints, reducing internet latency.

What does AWS Global Accelerator use to route user traffic to the nearest application endpoint?

  • A. Anycast IP addresses
  • B. DNS resolution
  • C. Border Gateway Protocol
  • D. Content Delivery Network (CDN)

Answer: A

Explanation: AWS Global Accelerator uses Anycast IP addresses, which allow users to be routed to the nearest application endpoint, improving performance and reducing latency.

True or False: When using AWS Global Accelerator, traffic must always pass through the public internet.

Answer: False

Explanation: One of the advantages of AWS Global Accelerator is that it routes user traffic through the AWS global network backbone, often reducing the amount of traffic traversing the public internet.

Which AWS service is NOT directly related to improving network performance and application availability by optimizing network connectivity?

  • A. AWS Transit Gateway
  • B. AWS Shield
  • C. Amazon VPC
  • D. Amazon S3

Answer: D

Explanation: Amazon S3 is a storage service and does not directly relate to network performance and application availability in the context of optimizing network connectivity like Global Accelerator, Transit Gateway, or VPC do.

True or False: AWS Global Accelerator provides automatic failover to the most healthy application endpoint within a region or across regions.

Answer: True

Explanation: AWS Global Accelerator continuously monitors the health of application endpoints and provides automatic failover to healthy endpoints, which aids in maintaining application availability.

AWS Global Accelerator supports which traffic protocols? (Select two)

  • A. TCP
  • B. UDP
  • C. ICMP
  • D. SCTP

Answer: A and B

Explanation: AWS Global Accelerator supports both TCP and UDP protocols, enabling it to accelerate a variety of applications with differing protocol requirements.

True or False: Global Accelerator is a good solution for applications that have a global user base and require Single Region deployment for their resources.

Answer: False

Explanation: While Global Accelerator can improve global application performance, it is particularly beneficial for multi-region deployments, where it can efficiently route traffic across regions to the closest endpoint.

What is the main benefit of using AWS Client VPN together with AWS Global Accelerator?

  • A. Reducing costs by consolidating VPN tunnels
  • B. Encrypting application data in transit over the internet
  • C. Accelerating the transfer of VPC logs to Amazon S3
  • D. Simplifying network administration through central management

Answer: B

Explanation: AWS Client VPN encryption ensures the security of data in transit, while AWS Global Accelerator improves the application performance for VPN users.

Interview Questions

Question: What is AWS Global Accelerator and how does it enhance network performance for applications?

AWS Global Accelerator is a service that improves the availability and performance of applications with users globally. It works by providing static IP addresses that act as a fixed entry point to your application endpoints in one or more AWS Regions. The service then routes user traffic to the optimal regional endpoint based on performance, utilizing the AWS global network, which reduces internet latency and jitter.

Question: How does AWS Global Accelerator optimize the path for user traffic to improve application performance?

AWS Global Accelerator optimizes the path for user traffic by leveraging the AWS global backbone network, which provides lower-latency, lower-jitter, and higher-throughput paths for your traffic. It intelligently routes traffic to the closest regional endpoint using Anycast IP addresses, minimizing the number of hops over the public internet and thereby optimizing performance.

Question: Can you explain the difference between AWS Global Accelerator and a Content Delivery Network (CDN) like Amazon CloudFront?

AWS Global Accelerator is primarily focused on optimizing network paths and improving performance for user-to-application traffic by directing traffic to the nearest application endpoint. A CDN like Amazon CloudFront is designed to cache content closer to users to reduce latency. CloudFront is best for static and streaming content, while Global Accelerator is more for dynamic or latency-sensitive traffic that requires a consistently fast connection.

Question: How does AWS Global Accelerator provide protection against Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks?

AWS Global Accelerator integrates with AWS Shield, a managed Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) protection service. AWS Shield Standard provides automatic protection for all AWS customers at no additional cost, while AWS Shield Advanced offers enhanced protections for an additional fee. Global Accelerator benefits from the DDoS protection features that Shield provides, including always-on detection and automatic inline mitigations that minimize application downtime and latency spikes.

Question: Can you outline the steps to set up AWS Global Accelerator for an existing application?

To set up AWS Global Accelerator for an existing application, you would:

  • Create an AWS Global Accelerator accelerator in the AWS Management Console or through the AWS CLI.
  • Configure listeners based on the protocols and ports you need.
  • Add endpoint groups in the regions where your application endpoints are located.
  • Add the application endpoints, such as Elastic Load Balancers, EC2 instances, or Elastic IPs, to the respective endpoint groups.
  • Associate the provided static Anycast IP addresses with your application’s DNS name using a DNS CNAME record.
  • Optionally, you may configure advanced settings such as traffic dials or client affinity.

Question: How does AWS Global Accelerator support client affinity, and when might you enable this feature?

Client affinity in AWS Global Accelerator is used to direct all requests from a user’s client IP address to the same endpoint, which is useful for maintaining session consistency. You enable this feature when your application needs to maintain stateful sessions, such as those for a multiplayer game or a complex transaction that spans multiple requests.

Question: What are some of the cost considerations when implementing AWS Global Accelerator?

The costs involved with AWS Global Accelerator include an hourly rate for each accelerator that is provisioned and additional charges for the amount of data transferred through the service. Understanding your expected traffic patterns is important to estimate these costs. It’s also advisable to leverage the AWS Pricing Calculator or AWS Cost Explorer for more accurate forecasting.

Question: Describe a scenario in which disabling AWS Global Accelerator for maintenance or cost-saving reasons could be justified.

Disabling AWS Global Accelerator may be justified in scenarios where the application is undergoing planned maintenance and will not be available to users, hence there is no need for optimized routing. Another scenario could be where cost-saving measures are being implemented during off-peak hours or during a predictable period of low user traffic.

Question: How does AWS Global Accelerator ensure high availability and redundancy for mission-critical applications?

AWS Global Accelerator provides high availability and redundancy by utilizing the AWS global network infrastructure, which is designed for fault tolerance and high availability. Global Accelerator’s use of Anycast IP addresses allows it to automatically reroute traffic to healthy endpoints without any change in the client-facing IP addresses, minimizing downtime in the event of an endpoint failure.

Question: What metrics and monitoring options are available with AWS Global Accelerator to track application performance?

AWS Global Accelerator integrates with Amazon CloudWatch, allowing you to monitor accelerator and endpoint health, as well as traffic and performance metrics such as client connection attempts, bytes in/out, and packet loss. These metrics can be used to set alarm thresholds and trigger notifications or to perform real-time analysis to ensure application performance meets the desired standards.

Question: In what ways can AWS Global Accelerator’s traffic dial feature assist with blue/green deployments or traffic management strategies?

The traffic dial feature in AWS Global Accelerator allows you to control the amount of traffic directed to specific endpoint groups. This can be instrumental in performing blue/green deployments, where you incrementally increase traffic to the new version (green) while decreasing it to the old version (blue), enabling controlled testing and rollback capabilities if necessary.

Question: Discuss how using AWS Global Accelerator could impact SEO and global HTTP request routing compared to using a traditional DNS-based approach.

Using AWS Global Accelerator can improve the performance for global users through better request routing and reduced latency, which could indirectly benefit SEO by improving user experience and page load times. Unlike traditional DNS, which resolves end-user requests to a fixed IP address possibly far from the user’s location, Global Accelerator directs traffic to the nearest endpoint, which can significantly enhance response times and consistency.

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Olivia Johansen
6 months ago

Great blog post! This clarified a lot about using Global Accelerator for optimizing network connectivity.

Jean-Philippe Lefevre
6 months ago

Informative article. I’m curious, how does Global Accelerator compare to Route 53 in terms of latency improvement?

Nick White
6 months ago

Thank you for this helpful post!

Ryan Willis
6 months ago

I appreciate the insights on Global Accelerator. Does anyone have experience integrating this with on-prem systems?

Anjali Raval
6 months ago

Very useful article! Cleared up a lot for me.

Gül Arıcan
6 months ago

This really helps me understand the benefits of Global Accelerator over traditional CDNs.

سپهر نكو نظر

Great insights! I wonder if there are any cost implications using Global Accelerator.

Ricardo Archuleta
6 months ago

Awesome post!

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