Redundancy is a vital part of modern IT.
In IT, redundancy refers to the duplication of critical components of a service to ensure it continues to function even if one of its components has failed. The goal of redundancy is to increase system availability and minimise downtime. Redundancy can be implemented at various levels of an IT system, including hardware, software and network infrastructure. For example, a company may have redundant servers that mirror each other’s data, so that if one server fails, the other can take over seamlessly.
Similarly, a network may have redundant routers or switches to ensure that if one fails, traffic can be rerouted through another device.
Redundancy is a key element of disaster recovery planning and can help organisations maintain business continuity in the face of unexpected events.
Having a redundancy strategy can help protect your business’s interests and data, increase reliability, and minimise downtime.
What is redundancy?
Redundancy is about having backup systems or components in place to protect against outages like disruptions, failures or disasters (fires, floods, severe cyberattacks, etc).
For most organisations, having a redundancy plan in place before anything bad happens is essential. That way, they can react quickly and decisively.
There are a few different types of redundancy, such as:
- Hardware
- Network
- Data
- Power
- Time
For example, you might need to plan a network redundancy solution for the inevitable times that it glitches or needs maintenance. Data redundancy protects you against database losses. Power backups – such as generators or batteries like the Tesla Powerwall – ensure the lights are always on and the servers are always working.
The most common type of redundancy when talking about IT strategy is hardware redundancy. In short, this involves implementing a second device in the network, a copy of the original. If something goes wrong with the device that’s usually used (say your laptop refuses to start), you’ll switch to the other one and carry on as usual. In the meantime, the original can be repaired.
Benefits of implementing redundancy solutions
As a brief summary, redundancy protects your business, charity or public sector organisation against downtime and data loss.
Downtime can be devastating for a company. By building redundancy into your systems and services, you’ll get your hardware and network back up in no time, minimising the damage.
Most redundancy is built in at the design stage and used automatically by the solution through things like routing and load balancers. So, it’s essential to capture the availability requirements and cost constraints of each application and then designing your system to fulfil those requirements. This means that when a component failure takes place, the redundant component automatically takes over.
Best practices for implementing redundancy solutions
Here are a few things you should consider when implementing redundancy solutions:
- Identify your critical systems– you can’t necessarily have a redundancy plan for everything. This isn’t a particularly cost-effective approach, especially for smaller organisations. You’ll need to focus your efforts on the most essential systems and develop redundancy strategies for them.
- Assess redundancy needs and options– first, you’ll need to assess what you need. For example, does a backup device need to be as powerful as the original? How much backup hardware do you have reasonable space for? Do your servers connect to multiple network switches? Do you have more than one server for each role? Do you have more than one database server and/or database? All these (and more) need to be considered. Write down your options and run through the pros and cons of each to come to a conclusion.
- ‘Redundancy by design’ – planning ahead is always the way in IT. Redundancy needs to be built in at the design phase. We work to understand what the options are and by using repeatability in the choices available, we know the choices and costs associated.
- Understand responsibilities – redundancy usually has to involve whoever is paying. If a particular department is paying for a solution and they want it to have no downtime but are unprepared to pay for any redundancy, then you have a problem.
- Check your redundancy capabilities actually work! – test them out. See what works and what doesn’t. Don’t wait for failures to happen. Instead, deliberately fail components to see if the application continues to be available, restore the component and check it continues to be available, fail multiple things at once. You’ll inevitably find areas in your redundancy strategy that must be ironed over or changed completely. We recommend using an IT professional to ensure you don’t lose anything for good.
Redundancy costs and considerations
A common myth about redundancy is that it’s expensive. And yes, it can be. However, the beauty of modern IT systems – especially cloud-based solutions – is that most things are scalable.
In other words, smaller organisations pay less, while larger corporations can expect to pay more. Generally, this means there are affordable options for everyone involved and solutions to meet all budgets.
However, for smaller organisations, building redundancy into an application or service can often be prohibitively expensive. While dedicated redundant infrastructure is workable in bigger organisations and businesses, in smaller ones, the cost per user for an application can make it untenable. In such scenarios, considering SaaS is probably a better option, then working with the vendor to understand what availability SLA they offer and if it meets your requirements.
Redundancy or highly available service offerings from suppliers are unlikely to be free. It’s worth paying a little extra to ensure your redundancy plan is secure and reliable. Don’t fall into the trap of ignoring the importance of this.
AMDH Services can help you manage redundancy
Here at AMDH Services, we’ve helped all sorts of clients up and down the country with designing, developing, implementing and managing cloud-based IT systems. Based in Derby, we travel to SMEs, charities and public sector organisations to really learn about you and what you need.
A vital part of digital transformation is a redundancy strategy. With this in place, you’ll be able to respond immediately when something goes wrong (as things always do).
For more information about AMDH Services and how we help you come up with an effective redundancy plan (to meet your budget), why not contact us through the form below? We’re always happy to have an obligation-free, friendly chat and explain the next steps.
We can’t wait to hear from you.
