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LargePortfolio centerpiece ~28h· 5 milestones

Build a multi-region platform with real disaster recovery

After an outage took the business offline for hours, leadership wants a credible answer to "what happens if a whole region fails?". You design and build the multi-region story, and then prove it by failing over for real.

Multi-region architectureTerraform modulesGlobal DNS failoverData replicationRTO/RPOObservabilityFinOpsBlameless postmortems
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What you'll build

A reusable Terraform-module platform running in two regions with health-based failover, replicated data, a tested recovery runbook with measured RTO/RPO, and cost guardrails.

See how we teach, before you sign up

You don't just get code dumped on you. Every starter file and every solution is explained line-by-line, in plain English. Here's one real file from this project:

providers.tfhcl
terraform {
  required_version = ">= 1.6"
  required_providers {
    aws = {
      source  = "hashicorp/aws"
      version = "~> 5.0"
    }
  }
}

provider "aws" {
  alias  = "primary"
  region = var.primary_region
  default_tags { tags = { project = "multi-region", environment = "prod" } }
}

provider "aws" {
  alias  = "secondary"
  region = var.secondary_region
  default_tags { tags = { project = "multi-region", environment = "prod" } }
}

Reading this file

  • alias = "primary"Names one AWS connection for the primary region so you can target it explicitly in every resource.
  • alias = "secondary"A second connection for the failover region, the whole multi-region build hinges on having both.
  • region = var.primary_regionPulls the region from a variable so swapping regions is a one-line change, not a rewrite.
  • default_tags { tags = {Auto-tags every resource in both regions so cost reports can split spend by region cleanly.

Two aliased providers. Every cross-region resource MUST name one explicitly.

That's 1 of 9 explained code blocks in this single project.

The build, milestone by milestone

  1. 1

    Modularize the infrastructure

    5 guided steps

    Copy-pasted regions drift and rot. Modules are what make "deploy to a new region" a one-line change instead of a multi-day hand-port.

  2. 2

    Go active in two regions

    5 guided steps

    Two regions only buy resilience if traffic actually moves when one dies. Health-checked DNS is the mechanism that makes failover automatic instead of a 3am phone call.

  3. 3

    Replicate the data

    5 guided steps

    Compute is replaceable; data is not. If the secondary region has stale or missing data, "failover" just means failing into a broken state, your RPO is defined right here.

  4. 4

    Write & test the DR runbook

    6 guided steps

    An untested runbook is fiction. The only credible DR is one you have actually executed and timed, that measured RTO/RPO is what leadership asked for.

  5. 5

    Guard the bill

    5 guided steps

    Two regions can quietly double your spend. FinOps guardrails are what keep a resilient architecture from becoming a finance incident.

What's inside when you start

4 starter files, ready to clone
5 guided milestones
5 full reference solutions
9 code blocks explained line-by-line
5 "is it working?" checks
4 interview questions it prepares you for

You'll walk away with

A module-based Terraform repo deploying two regions
A DR runbook with measured RTO/RPO from a live failover test
A blameless postmortem of the failover drill with owned action items
A cost report and tagging/budget strategy

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