Disk mirroring strategies and failover
Introduction
If an organisation's network or key pieces of hardware fail for whatever reason, it might have serious implications for the organisation. They would lose all of their employees' records. They would lose all of the data about the products they sell. They wouldn't know who has paid them for products and services and who still owes them money, and they wouldn't know what bills need to be paid. They would lose all the information about past and present customers and all the information about marketing and advertising. Losing data could be so serious that they might even go out of business. If some of the network hardware failed on your school or college network, you might lose all of your controlled assessments or other project work. The school might lose all of its information it needs to run the school and information about you, for example, contact information in case you have an accident. The data must be kept secure. Another way to achieve this is called disk mirroring, or 'failover'.
Failover
All equipment will fail eventually. Moving parts wear out. Dust gets into equipment and stops them working properly. There are other reasons, too. So that a business can continue as normal in the event of a serious hardware failure, organisations often use 'failover'. Failover is the term used when you have a second, identical piece of equipment that can start working automatically if the first main piece of equipment fails.
For example, one key piece of equipment on a client-server network is the server. This manages the entire network of personal computers, printers and other hardware on the network. If the server fails, the whole network will not be available for anyone to use.
Network designers often include a second, back-up server on a network. This second server has a mirror image of the software and files on the main server, and is constantly updated. If the main server fails, then this second server starts up automatically so that users on the network can carry on as normal. They won’t even know that there has been a major hardware problem. The network manager can then arrange to get the main server fixed.
You could ask your Network Manager if they have a back-up server that kicks in automatically in case the first one fails. You could also ask about the back-up system in place. Are magnetic tapes used? How is the back-up system organised? How often are back-ups taken? Have they considered using cloud storage for automatic back-ups if they don't? Why do they / don't they use cloud storage?