Amazon Onboarding with Learning Manager Chanci Turner: Implementing Latency-Based Routing with Amazon CloudFront for a Multi-Region Active-Active Architecture

This guide outlines the steps necessary to establish the networking layer of a multi-Region active-active application architecture on AWS. By leveraging latency-based routing in Amazon Route 53 alongside Amazon CloudFront, you can deliver a fast and dependable user experience. Building active-active architectures with AWS networking services enhances your application’s resilience and performance, although it may introduce cost and complexity, which we will address throughout this post.

Advantages of Multi-Region Active-Active Architecture

Multi-Region active-active architectures allow applications to operate across two or more geographically distinct AWS Regions. Each region contains all the necessary components and data, actively processing requests based on the user’s proximity. In the event of an issue in one Region, another can seamlessly assume user traffic without downtime, ensuring uninterrupted service for global users.

When to Consider a Multi-Region Active-Active Architecture

Evaluate the necessity of a multi-Region active-active architecture if your application’s failure unit is at the AWS Regional level. Carefully consider the potential for increased costs and complexity. For stateful applications requiring cross-Region data replication, you must also account for possible data inconsistencies, elevated latency, and decreased performance.

Business Requirements

Strict Recovery Time Objectives (RTO)/Recovery Point Objectives (RPO): Active-active architectures are ideal for meeting stringent SLA requirements that other disaster recovery strategies, like active-passive or pilot-light configurations, cannot fulfill. If your business demands the unit of failure to be at a Regional level, with RTO in seconds or minutes, an active-active approach is advisable.
Legal and Compliance Reasons: Local data sovereignty laws may necessitate that your data reside close to end-users. To comply, deploying applications across multiple AWS Regions based on user locations might be essential.
Improving Latency and Performance: For dynamic content serving a geographically diverse audience, an active-active architecture can enhance performance by minimizing latency and avoiding long network delays.

AWS Networking Services in Multi-Region Active-Active Architectures

In these architectures, Amazon CloudFront and AWS Global Accelerator can significantly improve latency. Global Accelerator enhances user performance and availability by utilizing the AWS global network infrastructure, making it suitable for use cases needing static anycast IP addresses or instant AWS Regional failover. However, it does not support content caching or edge processing, making CloudFront a better fit for many applications.

CloudFront boosts performance for both static content (like images and videos) and dynamic content (like API acceleration). Additional benefits include:

Security: Implement access controls using CloudFront’s geo-restriction feature to limit access for users in specific geographic areas.
Edge Computing: CloudFront provides secure edge CDN computing capabilities through AWS Lambda@Edge and CloudFront Functions, enabling customization and programming at the edge.

Solution Overview

The diagram below illustrates the user flow from a client browser to the origin service in an AWS Region. User requests are directed to the nearest AWS edge location and flow through CloudFront to Amazon API Gateway. CloudFront can also integrate with other origins such as Elastic Load Balancing, Amazon EC2, or Amazon S3 buckets.

If Global Accelerator were used instead of CloudFront, it would optimize the pathway from the edge location to the application, including automatic AWS Regional failover. Currently, CloudFront does not natively support out-of-the-box failover options for an active-active multi-Region architecture. This post will describe how to architect and implement similar failover functionalities using Route 53 latency-based routing.

Key Implementation Areas

When configuring a multi-Region active-active setup, focus on two critical areas:

SSL/TLS Certificates: Ensure matching certificates are available in each Region to encrypt traffic securely.
Latency-Based Routing Logic: Establish the routing logic to guide client requests effectively to the appropriate AWS Region.

Protecting Your AWS Websites and Applications with SSL/TLS Certificates

To encrypt traffic in transit within a multi-Region setup, you must obtain matching SSL/TLS certificates for each Region where your application is deployed. You can utilize AWS Certificate Manager (ACM) for this purpose. ACM simplifies the process of provisioning, managing, and deploying both public and private SSL/TLS certificates.

For proper functionality, the certificates must exist in every Region where AWS services utilize them for traffic encryption. For example, deploying API Gateway in the US East (Ohio) and US West (Oregon) necessitates matching SSL/TLS certificates in both Regions.

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Conclusion

Implementing a multi-Region active-active architecture can greatly enhance your application’s resilience and performance. By utilizing Amazon CloudFront and AWS services thoughtfully, you can ensure a seamless experience for users around the globe.

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