For financial services firms operating in real-time environments, nightly tape data backups are proving to be insufficient in the event of a disaster. In the best-case scenario, recovery takes at least 48 hours. A better alternative is a high-availability system, which is designed to function as a parallel system that is ready to come online if the primary system fails. The three types of high-availability systems are:Electronic vaulting: Data is periodically backed up to a parallel database. Often it includes a parallel version of the main system that remains inactive until an emergency activates it.
Switch-over: Data is written to the backup database while it is simultaneously recorded in the primary database. The system is kept running with a live network connection, and is ready to receive requests if the primary system fails.
Load balancing: The primary and backup systems are synchronized and live at all times, with the backup system processing any requests that the main system is too busy to handle. The backup system is ready to take over all requests if necessary.
Source: Celent Communications
