Final answer:
To ensure automatic recovery and increased availability for a PostgreSQL database on EC2, the Cloud Practitioner should configure Amazon RDS Multi-AZ deployment for synchronous replication and automatic failover, set up Read Replicas for potential regional failover, and enable Automated Backups for recovery options.
Step-by-step explanation:
To increase the availability of a PostgreSQL database running on an Amazon EC2 instance and ensure automatic recovery in case of a failure, a Cloud Practitioner can perform the following tasks:
- Configure Amazon RDS Multi-AZ deployment: This will create a primary database in one Availability Zone and replicate synchronously to a standby in a different Availability Zone. This setup ensures high availability because if the primary database fails, RDS will automatically failover to the standby without any manual intervention.
- Configure Amazon RDS Read Replicas: Though primarily used for scaling read-heavy database workloads, in the event of a regional disruption, a read replica in another region can be promoted to become the new primary database.
- Configure Amazon RDS Automated Backups: This ensures that even if there is a failure, you have a recent backup to restore from, thus increasing your recovery options. However, automated backups alone do not provide high availability.
While Enhanced Monitoring provides detailed metrics about the RDS instance, it does not directly increase availability or offer automatic recovery capabilities. Therefore, options 1, 2, and 3 are viable tasks for the Cloud Practitioner to undertake in order to meet the requirement of higher availability with automatic recovery. Option 1, Multi-AZ deployment, is the most direct way to achieve automatic recovery during a database failure.