http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/itanswers/choosing-between-failover-options/ Mon, 20 May 2013 03:56:25 +0000 hourly 1 http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/itanswers/choosing-between-failover-options/#comment-76214 The most-watched questions this week: April 20, 2010 - ITKE Community Blog Tue, 20 Apr 2010 05:34:28 +0000 #comment-76214 [...] Choosing between failover options asked by Jim4522 and answered by [...]

]]> http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/itanswers/choosing-between-failover-options/#comment-75800 jim4522 Fri, 09 Apr 2010 09:23:27 +0000 #comment-75800 Mrdenny, I can understand why failover can increase availability by quickly replacing an unavailable server, but does that mean that a server failure survived, is the equivalent of a server failure that could have been prevented? Jim4522

]]> http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/itanswers/choosing-between-failover-options/#comment-75799 jim4522 Fri, 09 Apr 2010 08:48:08 +0000 #comment-75799 Mrdenny, in response to your question “What service are you trying to cluster?” I have recently completed a tour of a number of large IT organizations primarily in the financial industry, in each I found management completely committed to mastering the ability to survive any failure that could occur on their huge server farms, to the exclusion of showing any interest in reducing the number of failures that occur on those servers. For example, none of those organizations seemed interested in acquiring more reliable servers because they knew that they could survive any failure that could occur on a less reliable server. Their theory seemed to be that a failure survived is the equivalent of a failure prevented. As a former CIO of one of the largest banks in the US I found that theory disturbing. So I decided I wanted to know more about IT’s ability to survive failures, which then brought me to the subject of failovers and whether a failover was really as good a solution to failure as not having the failure occur in the first place. Each of the CIO’s I talked to seemed to discount the importance of server reliability for two separate reasons. One, they thought that any failure that could occur on a server could be overcome by failing over to another server. Two, they thought that hardware failure was only a minor part of the failures that servers could experience so improving the reliability of the server would not significantly reduce the total failures on servers. Here is the dilemma I struggle with. If it is true that hardware failures are a small part of all failures that can affect servers then how does failover solve the problem since failover only seem to resolve hardware failures. Failover doesn’t seem to address, power problems, excessive heat problems, firmware problems, application problems, operator problems, Operating System problems, RAID storage problems, memory leakage problems, security problems and so on. If an operator turned a server off inadvertently it would seem that failover would substitute another server to pickup the work of the turned off server but who stops the operator from turning off the server?

]]> http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/itanswers/choosing-between-failover-options/#comment-75796 mrdenny Fri, 09 Apr 2010 07:17:18 +0000 #comment-75796 What service are you trying to cluster?

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