Single Point of Failure (SPOF)

Quick Reference: Cascading Failures | Why Microservices

Quick Reference

SPOF: Component whose failure brings down entire system

Mitigation: Redundancy, failover, load balancing, health checks

Examples: Single database, single load balancer, single API server

Clear Definition

Single Point of Failure is a component that, if it fails, causes the entire system to fail. Eliminating SPOFs is critical for high availability.

šŸ’” Key Insight: Identify and eliminate SPOFs through redundancy, failover, and distributed architectures.

Core Concepts

Common SPOFs

  1. Single Database: No replication
  2. Single Load Balancer: No redundancy
  3. Single API Server: No horizontal scaling
  4. Shared Resources: Single cache, message queue

Mitigation Strategies

  1. Redundancy: Multiple instances
  2. Failover: Automatic switching
  3. Load Balancing: Distribute load
  4. Health Checks: Detect failures

Best Practices

  1. Identify SPOFs: Audit architecture
  2. Add Redundancy: Multiple instances
  3. Implement Failover: Automatic recovery
  4. Test Failures: Chaos engineering

Quick Reference Summary

SPOF: Component whose failure brings down system.

Mitigation: Redundancy, failover, load balancing.

Key: Eliminate SPOFs for high availability.

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