Seth Eliot, Principal Resilience Architect at Arpio, and former Global Reliability Lead at AWS, joins Corey to discuss cloud resilience. He emphasizes that Multi-AZ setups are typically sufficient, with multi-region configurations only necessary for specific risks. Seth highlights the importance of balancing cost and resilience based on business needs, while cautioning against making resilience a mere checkbox exercise. Together, they explore disaster recovery challenges, noting that many companies fail to account for real-world complexities during testing. Seth also stresses the importance of avoiding control plane dependencies and warns that poorly designed multi-cloud setups can introduce additional risks.

(0:00) Intro

(1:12) Backblaze sponsor read

(1:40) Seth’s involvement in the Well-Architected sphere of AWS

(4:43) Well-Architected as a maturity model

(6:46) Cost vs. resilience

(10:37) The tension between resiliency and the cost pillar

(13:26) Legitimate reasons to go multi-region 

(18:31) Mistakes people make when trying to avoid an AWS outage

(24:07) The challenges of control planes

(25:04) What people are getting wrong about the resiliency landscape in 2024

(26:31) Where you can find more from Seth

Currently Principal Resilience Architect at Arpio, and ex-Amazon, ex-AWS, ex-Microsoft… Seth has spent years knee-deep in the tech trenches, figuring out how to design, implement, and launch software that's not just fast but also bulletproof. He thrives on helping teams tackle those "make or break" technical, process, or culture challenges—then partners up to solve them. As the Global Reliability Lead for AWS Well-Architected, Seth didn’t just work with customers; he scaled his insights via workshops, presentations, and blog posts, benefiting thousands. Before that, as one of the rare AWS-dedicated Principal Solutions Architects at Amazon.com (yep, not AWS, but the mothership itself), he rolled up his sleeves with engineers to fine-tune the AWS magic powering Amazon.com’s immense stack. Earlier? He led as Principal Engineer for Amazon Fresh and International Tech, and before that, helped bring Prime Video into homes everywhere.

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