How does OCI ensure high availability for applications?

High availability in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) is achieved through a combination of strategies that are designed to minimize downtime and ensure that applications remain accessible even in the event of failures. One primary method employed is the use of fault domains, which are essentially logical groupings of hardware within a data center. By distributing resources across multiple fault domains, OCI can protect applications from localized hardware failures. If one fault domain experiences an issue, the instances running in other fault domains can continue operating, thus maintaining service availability.

Additionally, OCI employs load balancing to distribute incoming traffic evenly across multiple instances. This not only helps to optimize resource use but also ensures that if one instance fails, traffic can be rerouted to healthy instances, preventing service disruption. The combination of these strategies allows OCI to deliver high availability by ensuring that applications remain operational, even in the face of hardware issues or unexpected spikes in demand.