Server failover solutions

Failover is a word used in IT circles to describe the ability of a system that automatically switches to a redundant or standby system to continue operating smoothly when the initial system fails for any reason. If the first system goes down, the standby or redundant system will be activated automatically so there are no interruptions. Having a failover solution in place is particularly critical for businesses that rely on their technology to be continuously available or extremely reliable, such as servers that host websites.

If you need a server failover solution for your business, you can get it easily. These solutions are provided in many different forms and capacities by many different data protection centers and services. You can also do it yourself with hardware in your own building, but that’s not always cost-effective or plausible, especially if you’re a smaller business owner. Choosing to use a service provider instead means that the data protection center will take care of your data and the necessary hardware to provide you with failover solutions.

There are some failover systems that don’t work fully automatically: they don’t initiate the failover themselves, but instead require manual approval from a real person before they start. If you want your system to have this type of “automated with manual approval” failover system, be sure to look for a data protection center that offers this, as not all of them may. If you don’t need to approve the failover before it starts, but still want to be notified, there are many systems that can send a text message or other notification to a designated person when a failover occurs.

Once the issue that caused the initial system to fail is fixed and failover is triggered, a process called failback will take place. Failback is the process of restoring a system to what it was originally doing before failover was triggered. In other words, it returns the work to the original system and the standby or redundant system goes back to waiting until it is needed again.

Both failover and failback can be done with hardware or with virtualization. Virtual servers allow people to have multiple copies of a server (or different servers) on a single piece of hardware. This is much less expensive than having multiple pieces of hardware available and works just as well, so if you’re looking for a failover solution but don’t have a lot of money to play with, look for a service that offers virtual solutions and you may find that the prices reflect it.

The importance of having your IT infrastructure backed up and supported in the event of a disaster cannot be underestimated. If your business needs its technology to be constantly available and relies heavily on being reliable, then a failover solution is one of the best courses to take.