7 High Availability Books That Separate Experts from Amateurs

Jason Cannon draws on over two decades of Linux system engineering experience at major companies like Amazon and Hewlett-Packard to deliver a focused guide on building highly available LAMP stack environments. You'll learn how to identify and eliminate single points of failure across Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP components, with practical demonstrations primarily on Ubuntu but applicable to other Linux distributions. Cannon’s approach covers physical servers, virtual environments, and cloud platforms, addressing challenges such as load balancing, floating IPs, and database clustering with clear, stepwise configurations. This book suits sysadmins and developers who want reliable uptime without spending weeks piecing together solutions themselves.

What makes this book especially useful is how Michael Elder and his co-authors Jake Kitchener and Dr. Brad Topol bring their deep practical experience to the table, guiding you beyond just theory. You’ll dive into concrete skills like managing Kubernetes clusters, implementing tenancy and capacity planning, and orchestrating continuous delivery pipelines that maintain service uptime. The chapters on hybrid cloud scenarios and disaster recovery strategies stand out for anyone aiming to build resilient applications. This book suits developers and operators who want to master running OpenShift and Kubernetes at scale, not just dabble, providing a solid foundation for enterprise-ready high availability.

This tailored book delves into high availability techniques with a focus that matches your specific environment and objectives. It explores core principles of designing fault-tolerant systems, examines various replication and failover methods, and reveals approaches to scaling infrastructure for resilience. By concentrating on your unique setup and goals, it presents content that bridges expert knowledge with your particular challenges, enhancing your understanding without overwhelming you with irrelevant details. The personalized approach ensures that you engage with material that truly matters to your role and projects, helping you build systems that maintain uptime and reliability in demanding conditions.

Drawing from his extensive experience as a software architect and thought leader in cloud computing, Lee Atchison addresses the intricate challenges of scaling critical applications in the cloud. You’ll gain a clear understanding of how to build resilient, scalable systems that maintain high availability despite growing traffic and complexity, with practical insights into microservices architecture and risk mitigation. The book offers detailed exploration of the Single Team Owned Service Architecture (STOSA) model, which aligns development organization scaling with application demands, making it particularly useful for engineers, managers, and directors navigating cloud environments. If your goal is to improve system reliability while managing operational risk, this book lays out foundational concepts and strategies without unnecessary jargon.

Peter A. Carter brings over a decade of hands-on experience with SQL Server to this detailed guide focused on high availability using AlwaysOn. You’ll gain a clear understanding of key concepts like Recovery Point Objectives and Recovery Time Objectives alongside practical instructions for deploying AlwaysOn Availability Groups across Windows, Linux, and Azure environments. The book dives into advanced configurations such as clusterless and distributed Availability Groups, giving you tools to design resilient systems tailored to your organization's uptime needs. If you manage SQL Server databases and want to master continuous availability, this book offers precise, experience-driven insights without fluff or jargon.

Drawing from over 15 years of hands-on experience at Microsoft, Uttam Parui offers an in-depth exploration of Always On Availability Groups as a robust solution for enterprise high availability and disaster recovery. You’ll gain a clear understanding of planning, deploying, managing, and troubleshooting these groups, including how to optimize resource use and reduce downtime. The book walks you through practical techniques such as monitoring performance and integrating cloud services like Windows Azure, supported by real-world war stories and best practices. This resource is tailored for SQL Server professionals who need to ensure mission-critical applications remain accessible and resilient under pressure.

This tailored book explores fast-track actions to enhance your system's availability, focusing on practical steps tailored to your unique infrastructure and goals. It covers key principles of high availability, emphasizing how to diagnose vulnerabilities and implement quick, effective improvements that match your experience level and technical environment. The content reveals how to prioritize interventions for immediate impact while setting a foundation for sustained system resilience. By concentrating on your specific needs, this personalized guide makes complex high availability concepts approachable and actionable. It bridges the gap between foundational theory and your real-world setup, offering a clear, custom pathway to boost uptime rapidly and confidently.

Drawing from his extensive experience at Sandon Associates and Ryerson Polytechnic University, Iain Campbell offers a detailed exploration of Linux systems tailored to uphold high availability for critical e-commerce and intranet applications. You gain practical knowledge on configuring Linux 2.4 servers, managing fault tolerance, and employing features like Logical Storage Management and high-availability clusters. The book goes beyond theory, providing real-world techniques for risk analysis, monitoring, backup, and recovery that you can apply directly to maintain near-zero downtime environments. If you're responsible for running or scaling Linux-based infrastructures where uptime is non-negotiable, this book will deepen your technical toolkit without unnecessary jargon.

The methods Shaun Thomas developed while deeply involved with PostgreSQL since 2000 shape this detailed guide to building resilient database clusters. You’ll learn how to plan hardware and architecture to reduce outages, use tools like repmgr and Patroni for automated failover, and implement multi-master replication to enhance availability. Detailed chapters walk you through monitoring with Nagios and the TIG stack, managing backups via proxies, and orchestrating zero-downtime upgrades, all tailored for PostgreSQL 12. This book suits you if you are a Postgres administrator or developer aiming to maintain a robust, scalable cluster without risking costly downtime or data loss.