Which high-availability solution involves multiple servers that each service requests concurrently and can take over the load of a failed member?

Which high-availability solution involves multiple servers that each service requests concurrently and can take over the load of a failed member?

• A. Active-passive
• B. Active-active
• C. Passive-passive
• D. Passive-active

Answer: (B)

Active-active high availability means several servers are online at the same time and all handle requests concurrently, with a load balancer distributing traffic among them. If one server fails, the others are already processing work and can take over its load without waiting for a failover, keeping the service available and responsive. This setup boosts throughput and resilience because it doesn’t rely on a single active node. The trade-off is that you must keep data and state synchronized across all nodes to avoid inconsistencies, which adds complexity.

Active-active high availability means several servers are online at the same time and all handle requests concurrently, with a load balancer distributing traffic among them. If one server fails, the others are already processing work and can take over its load without waiting for a failover, keeping the service available and responsive. This setup boosts throughput and resilience because it doesn’t rely on a single active node. The trade-off is that you must keep data and state synchronized across all nodes to avoid inconsistencies, which adds complexity.