AWS Failure Injection Simulator: New Chaos Engineering as a Service Offering

Updated on February 3, 2021

Recently, AWS introduced the company’s chaos engineering as a service offering, AWS Fault Injection Simulator, built with the purpose of simplifying the process of running chaos experiments in the cloud. We asked Adrian Cockcroft, AWS VP of cloud architecture strategy about chaos engineering, what the challenges are that put people off adopting it, and how AWS’s new tool fits in the space.

Once only practiced among tech giants, today, chaos engineering is the latest trend with a growing number of companies adopting the discipline to detect failures within their systems.

Recently, AWS introduced the company’s chaos engineering as a service offering, AWS Fault Injection Simulator, built with the purpose of simplifying the process of running chaos experiments in the cloud, as highlighted in this TechCrunch article.


We asked Adrian Cockcroft, AWS VP of cloud architecture strategy about chaos engineering, the challenges surrounding it that put people off adopting it, and how AWS’s new tool fits in the space:


How would you define chaos engineering?

Adrian: Experiment to ensure that the impact of failures is mitigated.

The last strand that breaks is not the cause of the failure. Build resilient systems like a rope not a chain, but make sure you know how much margin you have and how “frayed” your system is.


Why is chaos engineering difficult?

Adrian: The need to test is difficult for a few reasons:


What separates AWS Fault Injection Simulator from other tools in the space?

Adrian:
AWS FIS enables you to run experiments to ensure that both availability and performance impact of failures are mitigated. Most of the tools in the space look at just availability. We (AWS) decided we needed to look at performance impact as well.


What are some of the top upsides of AWS FIS?

Adrian: FIS is a fully managed chaos engineering service:

It’s easy to get started:

Has real world conditions:

Has built in safeguards:

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