Which redundancy pattern provides continuous operation by having multiple active components that handle workloads in parallel?

• A. Active-Passive
• B. Active-Active
• C. Cold Standby
• D. Hot-Standby

Answer: (B)

Redundancy patterns for high availability describe how many components are active and how they share work. When multiple components are active at the same time and handle workloads in parallel, you achieve continuous operation because traffic can be distributed and no single path interrupts service. If one component fails, the others keep processing, so users don’t experience downtime. This is the Active-Active pattern, commonly implemented with a clustered service, load balancer, and evenly distributed requests across nodes. Other patterns rely on a single active node with backups that are idle or only brought online when needed, which can introduce failover delays or don’t provide parallel processing; these include configurations with one active and standby, backups powered off until needed, or a standby that’s ready but not actively handling live traffic.