Which characteristic of cloud systems ensures minimal downtime?

The characteristic of high availability is crucial for ensuring minimal downtime in cloud systems. High availability refers to the capability of a system to remain operational and accessible for a specified percentage of time, typically targeting 99.9% uptime or more. This is achieved through redundancy, failover mechanisms, and continuous monitoring, which allow systems to recover quickly from failures or outages. By deploying resources across multiple servers or geographic locations, cloud systems can redirect traffic and maintain functionality even when individual components experience issues.

In contrast, rapid elasticity allows systems to scale resources up or down based on demand, which is important for performance but does not directly address the prevention of downtime. Resource pooling involves multiple customers sharing the same physical resources, enhancing efficiency but not ensuring uptime on its own. Scalability refers to a system's ability to handle growing amounts of work, which is significant for adapting to demand, yet again, it does not inherently prevent downtime. Therefore, high availability stands out as the key characteristic that specifically focuses on minimizing downtime in cloud environments.