cluster-computingreplicationhigh-availabilityfailoverdowntime

What is the difference between failover vs high availability?


According to my reading on jboss documentation it says,

We define high availability as the ability for the system to continue functioning after failure of one or more of the servers. A part of high availability is failover which we define as the ability for client connections to migrate from one server to another in event of server failure so client applications can continue to operate.

Is failover part of high availability? How can we differentiate failover vs high availability?


Solution

  • High Availability

    Refers to the fact that the server system is in some way tolerant to failure. Most of the time this is done with hardware redundancy. Assume a machine has redundant power supplies, if one fails the machine will keep running.

    Failover

    Then you have application redundancy (failover), which usually refers to the ability for an application running on multiple hardware installations to respond to clients in a consistent manner from any of those hardware installations. That way, if the hardware does totally fail, or the O/S dies on a particular machine, another machine can carry on.

    SQL Server deals with application redundancy in four ways: