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Home / Glossary / HA
Glossary · Cloud

HA

High Availability

In plain language

A setup with spare parts built in, so your service keeps running when one piece fails.

The metaphor

Like a shop with two tills: if one breaks, customers still get served.

Going deeper

How it works

  • Critical pieces, such as a server, are duplicated.
  • If one fails, the other takes over automatically.
  • It reduces downtime and costs more.
  • It makes sense for services where an hour offline is expensive.
In practice
  • A clinic runs two internet lines.
  • A firm keeps a spare firewall configured.
  • An online shop hosts across two data centres.

A question owners ask

Do I need it?

Only for what cannot stop. For most small offices, fast recovery is more sensible than fully duplicated systems.

Related terms
APIApplication Programming InterfaceCloud storageCSPCloud Service ProviderGoogle WorkspaceIaaSInfrastructure as a ServiceIaCInfrastructure as CodeIdPIdentity ProviderMaaSMonitoring as a Service

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