Fault Tolerance & High Availability
What is Fault Tolerance?
β Ability of a system to continue functioning even when some components fail
β Ensures minimal downtime and uninterrupted services
β Achieved through redundancy, replication, and failover mechanisms
Fault Tolerance Techniques
β Redundancy β Multiple instances of critical components
β Replication β Copying data across multiple nodes or servers
β Failover β Automatic switching to a standby system during failure
β Error Detection β Identifying failures through monitoring and health checks
β Graceful Degradation β Reducing functionality instead of full system crash
What is High Availability (HA)?
β High Availability ensures systems are always accessible with minimal downtime
β Measured in βninesβ (e.g., 99.9% uptime β 8.76 hours downtime/year)
β Achieved by designing systems to eliminate single points of failure
High Availability Strategies
β Load Balancing β Distribute traffic across multiple servers
β Clustering β Group servers to act as a single system for reliability
β Data Replication β Keep multiple data copies for recovery
β Geographic Distribution β Deploy servers across regions to handle outages
β Monitoring & Alerts β Detect failures early and respond quickly
Fault Tolerance vs High Availability
β Fault Tolerance β Focuses on preventing failures from affecting the system
β High Availability β Focuses on minimizing downtime during failures
β Both are often combined for mission-critical applications
Real-World Examples
β Banking β Redundant servers to ensure no downtime for transactions
β Cloud Platforms β Replication across data centers for global uptime
β E-commerce β Load balancers and failover systems during sales surges
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