A Need to Know Redundancy And Failover

Redundancy and failover are two useful innovations in the field of computing that were invented few decades ago. These very common concepts are related to two things, when a part or the computer fails or switches to another. The only but the most important difference between a good and a bad hosting is that one does the job quickly & seamlessly, while the other one is very slow and disrupting.

Network redundancy is widely known this. Internet is a set of inter-connected networks. It is the path that makes it possible to send page requests, file transfers and data movement from one node to another within the network. If there are two or more paths between the computer of the user and the server, failure or unavailability of one is not a big problem.

Of course, the total load of data transfer does not change if one path fails to work and it gets transferred onto the second path. If at that moment, large number of useless and destructive programs flood the network, the situation will become worse. You might be required to shut down some parts of the network to prevent the further spread, produced by more traffic.

You can relate the terms redundancy and failover to servers, which are end nodes of a network. There can be many reasons of the failure of server like the hard drive failure, memory malfunction, motherboard overheating, web server software overload, operating system bug and more. When the two or more servers are configured for making one overtake the slack of the failed one, it is termed as redundancy.

Although, redundancy is very common but it is more difficult to achieve in comparison to network redundancy. When you re-boot or replace or repair the failed server with another hardware, there is no need of redundancy. Most of the sophisticated and expert web hosts prefer to use redundancy than the alternative method.

Therefore, if you are looking for a superior service offering web hosting company, do consider the redundancy factor. Examine which company will provide better assistance than another in times of failure. There may be service provider who prefers to simply re-boot the hard drive, where as other prefer to have redundant disk arrays.

If a hardware has multiple disk drivers with all having access to server, failure of one or more drive would not bring down the system. The failed drive automatically gets replaced and at times, the administrator himself does not get to know about it.

Failover systems are more sophisticated options available in market that can take the entire load of the crashed system, without the end user knowing if something has happened. Most of the times, a user just has to refresh his browser and everything on the page gets fine.

It is essential for a website owner to gather as much information as he can, about redundancy and failover, so that if anything goes wrong, he knows what options are available. The knowledge about these options will help him make a better choice and deliver an improved web site experience.