What Does Server Redundancy Mean?

Server redundancy refers to the amount and intensity of backup, failover

or redundant servers in a computing environment. It defines the ability of
a computing infrastructure to provide additional servers that may be
deployed on runtime for backup, load balancing or temporarily halting a
primary server for maintenance purposes.

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Techopedia Explains Server Redundancy
Server redundancy is implemented in an enterprise IT infrastructure
where server availability is of paramount importance. To enable server
redundancy, a server replica is created with the same computing power,
storage, applications and other operational parameters.

A redundant server is kept offline. That is, it powers on with

network/Internet connectivity but is not used as a live server. In case of
failure, downtime or excessive traffic at the primary server, a redundant
server can be implemented to take the primary server's place or share its
traffic load.

What is server redundancy?

Ref: What is server redundancy? | IT PRO

When uptime is all-important, you need redundant

servers on hand when trouble strikes
by: Rene Millman

14 Apr 2021
For server infrastructure, "redundancy" is a vital part of keeping everything
working, despite the connotations of the word.

In the IT world, the term redundancy is a duplication of essential functions

or components of a system that tries to increase the reliability of this
system. Usually, it will appear in the form of a fail-safe or backup.
Therefore, it is essential to have these so-called redundant servers in any
business, as it forms a key part of a backup, maintenance or load balancing
strategies.
RELATED RESOURCE

Server redundancy is commonly found in IT environments that rely on

large-scale server reliability. The redundant server reflects a production
server to produce a mirror image of it. This means it has the same storage,
applications and compute capacity all running under the very same
configurations.

However, the main difference here is that the redundant server is not
online, and it is not utilised as a "live" server until it is needed. Despite this,
it still has network connectivity ready to go and can receive power, if it is
ever needed. This usually happens during extreme traffic or downtimes.
The redundant server is used to spread the workload or pick the network
back up.
What is server failover?
Ref: What is server failover? | Failover meaning |
Cloudflare
Server failover is the practice of having a backup server (or servers) prepared to
automatically take over if the primary server goes offline. Server failover works like a
backup generator. When the power goes out in a building or home, a backup
generator temporarily restores electricity. Similarly, in server failover, a secondary
server takes over when the primary server fails. The goal of server failover is to
improve a network or website's fault tolerance, or its ability to continue operating
when one of its parts fails.

A server's primary job is to store content and data to share with other computers.
While there are different types of servers, web servers are perhaps the most well-
known because they keep websites and applications operational. When web servers
fail, they cannot process requests, which means they cannot serve data to clients.
Without server failover, a failed server can cause a loading error or a site outage.

Servers can fail for many reasons, such as:

 Power outages

 Natural disasters

 Unexpected traffic surges

 Cyber attacks (like Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks)

 Hardware complications (like cable problems or overheating)

 Operating system issues

While no one can fully predict when or how a server might fail, IT leaders know that
server failure is inevitable. Failover is a backup plan that helps prevent a complete
outage.

Failover often goes hand in hand with a process called load balancing. Load
balancers increase application availability and performance by distributing traffic
across more than one server. To ensure requests are assigned to servers that can
handle the traffic, many load balancers monitor server health and implement failover.

What is server redundancy?

Server redundancy is a measure of how many backup servers are in place to support
a primary server. For example, a site hosted on one server with no backups is not
redundant. Configuring failover creates server redundancy that improves availability
and prevents outages. "Availability" describes the amount of time a site or
application is online.

What is the difference between failover

and switchover?
The terms "failover" and "switchover" are sometimes confused with one another. In
failover, the shift to a redundant server happens automatically. Switchover is a similar
process, only the shift to the secondary server happens manually, creating a short
period of downtime. Because failover happens automatically, there is usually no
downtime associated with a switch to a secondary server.

How does server failover work?

For server failover to work, servers must be connected so that they can sense issues
and take over when necessary. Physical “heartbeat” cables can connect servers and
allow for monitoring, just like a heartbeat monitor tracks a person’s heartbeat. Server
monitoring can also take place over the Internet.

For example, Cloudflare Load Balancing periodically sends HTTP/HTTPS requests to

server pools to monitor their status. If the HTTP/HTTPS check reveals that a server is
unhealthy or offline, Cloudflare will reroute traffic to an available server.

Depending on the configuration, failover works slightly differently. Server failover

configurations are either active-active or active-standby.

Active-standby

In active-standby, there is a primary server and one or more secondary servers. In a

two-server setup, the secondary server monitors the primary one but otherwise
remains inactive. If the secondary server senses any change with the primary server, it
will take over and advise the data center that the primary server needs restoration.
Once the primary server is restored, it takes over once again, and the secondary
server resumes a standby position. The act of a primary server resuming operations is
called failback.

Active-active

By contrast, in a two-server active-active configuration, both servers must remain

active. An active-active configuration is typically associated with load balancing
because the servers are configured in the same way and share the workload. When a
server fails in an active-active configuration, the traffic routes to the operational
server or servers.

Why is server failover necessary?

Server failover is important because a single server's failure could knock a site offline
without it.
Server availability can impact industries differently. For example, ecommerce and
gaming companies are completely dependent on their site working properly. Other
industries, like B2B SaaS companies, risk upsetting their end users if they cannot
access the information they need to do their job. At the same time, availability is
nonnegotiable for industries that meet urgent needs, like medical or emergency
services.

Apart from availability, failover is an important component of most disaster recovery

plans. Disaster recovery plans encompass scenarios like failed backups, a network
going down, or even power outages. Disaster recovery helps companies maintain
business continuity and avoid the lost revenue associated with downtime.

What is a failover cluster?

A failover cluster refers to a group of two or more servers that work together to
make failover possible. Failover clusters create the server redundancy that enables
high availability (HA) or continuous availability (CA).

Systems that aim for as little downtime as possible (or 99.999% uptime) are
considered HA. If an HA system experiences downtime, it should only last for a few
seconds or minutes at a time. Highly-regulated industries, like government services,
may need to meet high availability standards for compliance purposes.

CA systems, on the other hand, are created to avoid any downtime at all. No
downtime means that users can stay connected to a site or application at all times,
even during maintenance. One area where CA might be necessary, for example, is in
online stock trading, where transactions are highly time-sensitive. CA systems are
more complex to build and maintain because they must account for every single
point of failure, from servers to physical location to power access.

What is fast failover?

As failover configurations can operate slightly differently, the speed at which failover
happens can vary. Some load balancers offer fast failover, which means the system
monitors server health and can quickly failover when needed. Fast failover is essential
to achieve HA or CA.

Cloudflare Load Balancing achieves fast failover by actively monitoring servers and
instantly rerouting traffic when an issue is detected, resulting in zero downtime.
Learn more about Cloudflare Load Balancing.

Server Load Balancing

Definition
Ref: What is Server Load Balancing? Definition & Related FAQs | Avi Networks

Server Load Balancing (SLB) is a technology that distributes high traffic sites
among several servers using a network-based hardware or software-defined
appliance. And when load balancing across multiple geo locations, the intelligent
distribution of traffic is referred to as global server load balancing (GSLB). The
servers can be on premises in a company’s own data centers, or hosted in a private
cloud or the public cloud.
Server load balancers intercepts traffic for a website and reroutes that traffic to
servers.
FAQs
What is Server Load
Balancing?
Server Load Balancing (SLB) provides network services and content delivery using a
series of load balancing algorithms. It prioritizes responses to the specific requests
from clients over the network. Server load balancing distributes client traffic to
servers to ensure consistent, high-performance application delivery.

Server load balancing ensures application delivery, scalability, reliability and high
availability.
How does Server Load
Balancing Work?
Server load balancing works within two main types of load balancing:

• Transport-level load balancing is a DNS-based approach which acts independently

of the application payload.
• Application-level load balancing uses traffic load to make balancing decisions such
as with windows server load balancing.

What are the Advantages of

Server Load Balancing?
Distributing incoming network traffic through web server load balancers across
multiple servers aims to increase efficiency of application delivery to end users for a
reliable application experience. IT teams are increasingly relying on server load
balancers to:

• Increase Scalability: load balancers are able to spin up or down server resources
based on spikes in traffic to the pool of servers that are best suited to handle these
increases in traffic and keep applications performance optimized.

• Redundancy: Using multiple web servers to deliver applications or websites

provides a safeguard against the inevitable hardware failure and application
downtime. When server load balancers are in place they can automatically transfer
traffic to working servers from servers that go down with little to no impact on the end
user.

• Maintenance and Performance: Business with web servers distributed across

multiple locations and a variety of cloud environments can schedule maintenance at
any time to improve performance with minimal impact on application uptime as
server load balancers can redirect traffic to resources that are not undergoing
maintenance.
What is the Difference Between
HTTP Server Load Balancing
and TCP Load Balancing?
HTTP server load balancing is a simple HTTP request/response architecture for
HTTP traffic. But a TCP load balancer is for applications that do not speak HTTP.
TCP load balancing can be implemented at layer 4 or at layer 7. An HTTP load
balancer is a reverse proxy that can perform extra actions on HTTPS traffic.

Does Avi offer Server Load

Balancing?
Yes. Avi Networks delivers modern, multi-cloud load balancing, including an entirely
innovative way of handling local and global server load balancing for enterprise
customers across the data center and clouds.
This capability delivers:

• Active / standby data center traffic distribution

• Active / active data center traffic distribution
• Geolocation database and location mapping
• Consistency across data centers
• Rich visibility and metrics for all transactions

For more information on server load balancing see the following resources: