What is resilience?
Resilience is the ability of a technology system-like a server, network, or application-to keep working correctly even when something goes wrong, such as hardware failures, software bugs, or unexpected spikes in traffic.
Let's break it down
Resilience is built from a few key ideas: redundancy (having backup components), fault tolerance (designing the system to handle errors without crashing), graceful degradation (still providing core functions when parts fail), and self‑healing (automatically detecting and fixing problems).
Why does it matter?
When a system is resilient, it stays online longer, which means users can trust it, businesses avoid lost revenue, and critical services (like emergency communications) keep running when they’re needed most.
Where is it used?
Resilience is common in cloud platforms (AWS, Azure), data centers, telecom networks, IoT devices, autonomous vehicles, and even everyday apps that need to stay available 24/7.
Good things about it
- Higher reliability and uptime
- Better user experience and trust
- Protection against revenue loss and brand damage
- Ability to scale and handle traffic spikes smoothly
Not-so-good things
- Adds extra cost for duplicate hardware or services
- Increases system complexity, making it harder to design and maintain
- May introduce performance overhead due to extra checks and backups
- Can give a false sense of security if not tested regularly.