What is fault tolerance

Fault tolerance is the concept of ensuring that systems will continue to function because you have created a solution that involves having backup copies of power supplies, hard drives, and network links. If one of the links goes down, there would be another link ready to kick in at any time, reducing downtime and ensuring an available solution to clients on the network. The following is a list of widely used fault-tolerant components found on the network.

·         RAID solutions Redundant Array of Independent Disks (RAID) is the concept of storing redundant data on additional drives in case one drive in the RAID solution should fail. RAID solutions can apply to hardware or software. The hardware solution involves having a RAID controller that controls the RAID array, whereas in a software solution the RAID solution is managed by software such as the network operating system. The software solutions are cheaper, but the hardware solutions offer better performance and are more flexible

·         Power A number of network devices such as servers support a fault-tolerant power source such as a power supply in case the original power supply fails.

·         Network link In a number of networking environments a fault-tolerant network link is created to ensure that one network location can communicate with another location at all times or that there is a constant connection to the WAN environment or Internet. A number of business applications require a network link at all times; therefore, when you design the network infrastructure, you should decide whether the organization requires a fault tolerant network link.