What Should I think about when shopping for different types of Failover?

Network uptime is vital to any business, regardless of industry or location. Your servers or networks may encounter problems from time to time, and you may have a backup system to run in case that happens. Failover refers to automatically switching to a backup system to keep your business running whenever there’s a hitch in your primary systems.

Failover is essential to every business for several reasons. The most obvious advantage of having a failover strategy is that you’ll minimize system downtime, enabling your users to continue working as you solve the problem. Other benefits include:

• It may save your business money. The potential loss of funds caused by downtime, even for a few hours, is often much greater than the cost of the failover system.
• It gives you enough room to work on the problem rather than rushing to find a quick fix.

Point-of-Sale (POS) services, other daily operations, and customer satisfaction need not suffer due to connectivity problems. Here are a few considerations for your business if you consider implementing a failover system.

Problems may occur at any point in your network, so having a failover system for multiple network parts is key to your failover strategy. For example, if your primary router goes down, you can have a parallel backup router take over, running on Virtual Router Redundancy Protocol (VRRP). Aside from router failure, the protocol also takes care of connectivity issues. A backup LTE solution is immediately deployed if your wired WAN connection has a problem.

Multiple routers and connectivity sources are examples of how to utilize redundancy to ensure maximum uptime on your system.

For organizations that may not be able to overhaul their entire systems, overlay failover is a more straightforward solution that doesn’t require as many resources. An example of overlay failover would be to supplement a current wired connection with an LTE broadband or 5G connection converted to Ethernet. The existing routers can be connected to both, thus having a cost-effective failover solution. After plugging in the routers, they can also be configured remotely with a network management system, making it easier to set up and use.

Overlay failover is an easy way to boost the reliability of your system without relying on the same wired connections.

During regular and peak operation times, your business transfers multiple types of data around, such as sales information, inventory data, voice and video, among others. Even though your primary data connection may be running without a problem, getting extra bandwidth is always welcome, especially during peak hours.

LTE or 5G connections can be used for both load balancing and failover options since they support high bandwidth. For example, you may have all the critical traffic on LTE and everything else on a wired connection.

Whenever you lose connection to your network, you’ll often lose access to all devices connected. Network management also becomes a challenge, and you may need to do a site visit, which may be expensive and labour-intensive or guide an employee on-site through the troubleshooting steps.

Out-of-Band Management (OOBM) with a network management system allows your staff to use wireless connectivity to remotely access the router, network, and all connected devices. Even when your primary network is down, you can still monitor the system without being on-site.

Not all businesses have wired connections, but they still need a failover system in place in case their systems are down and to maintain near-continuous availability. Some examples of mobile connectivity include police vehicles, buses, and other vehicles on the move. Wi-Fi can be used as a failover option if LTE fails. You can also automatically switch to Wi-Fi for video offloading whenever available and use LTE or 5G on the road.

You can additionally use a dual modem setup as a Wireless-to-Wireless failover option so that one of the two cellular systems is the primary and the other as backup.

Having multiple WAN options is vital for businesses with multiple locations or with hectic systems. Any downtime is very costly in these situations — even 99.5% uptime is not often enough. Multi-WAN solutions provide sufficient backup for these systems. Your network can be configured to allow you to choose the WAN source whenever you want to.

As you think of failover for your system, it is essential to think of future-proofing the set-up. Your failover solution should be adaptable to both your needs and technology to ensure that your investment continues to pay off for years to come. Some types of failover systems you can employ for your business include:

For most businesses, their WAN connection is often a single line to their Internet service provider (ISP). The whole network can be compromised when there's a problem with the ISP, destructive weather events, or even construction accidents.

Having such a thin connection line to your data is a considerable risk mitigated by having multiple links. Adding a wireless link is one such way of diversifying your connections. A second wired connection may still be affected by the same problems as the first and may take longer to configure. A wireless connection is an easier way to have a backup, which may also be the lifeline to remote access to your data center when the wired connections fail.

While a lower-bandwidth wireless connection can handle critical data, LTE and 5G connections can handle full traffic and are solid failover options. You can also use your current router's LTE or 5G adapters to take advantage of its failover capabilities.

Link diversity is often not enough for your failover strategy. You also have to use different ISPs as backups to your primary link. Using one ISP exposes you to risks such as routing issues, network congestion, and even core network failure. Using different ISPs, wireless or wired, minimizes these carrier-related problems while adding diversity to your network.

You can further diversify your connections across various locations to better protect from interruptions. For example, if your redundant link is in another state, you face significantly less risk of incidents in a geographical region.

Finding the connection path from your data center to your offices is also essential. You might have two different ISPs as your failover option and assume they use different data paths. This is often not the case since providers share maintenance holes, fibre vaults, and other infrastructure. Before having both your systems taken out by the same incident, determine which routes your providers use before using their services.

While you may have multiple connections to your data, your hardware can also fail, disrupting your network. Having a single router, for example, is a risk to your network because it can go offline at any time for several reasons, including cable issues, configuration problems, and security attacks. Cases like these often need a site visit, meaning the downtime may take a while to fix.

Having redundant hardware effectively protects against this risk. Mirrored routers take care of router failure, with the backup taking over automatically when the primary one fails. The routers also continually monitor each other so they can switch back when normal operations are restored.

Whenever you lose connection to your network, you’ll often lose access to all devices the server connected to the network as well. Network management also becomes a challenge, and you may need to do a site visit, which may be expensive and labour-intensive or guide an employee on-site through the troubleshooting steps.

Out-of-Band Management (OOBM) with a network management system allows your staff to use wireless connectivity to remotely access the router, network, server, and all other connected devices. Even when your primary network is down, you can still monitor the system without being on-site.

Sometimes, your network could function well, but the traffic to your network is more than the available bandwidth. Software updates and connecting additional devices are some common reasons for traffic spikes. One way to accommodate network spikes is to use the backup link to cover the additional bandwidth required. As the traffic spikes, the secondary connection kicks in to handle the extra traffic and is released once the spike is over. The traffic is also dynamically routed to the fastest channels, ensuring the network runs well.

Having a failover strategy is key to keeping your business online, even when there are issues in the network. Hardware redundancy, connection diversity, and out-of-band management are some methods you can use to maintain network uptime. With the help of modern routers, better wireless connections, and new technologies, maintaining network uptime can only transform for the better.

Final note. You have an outage for an extended period, even if you have a failover plan. In this case, you may need to employ a disaster recovery strategy. Please read our article on failover vs disaster recovery.

For any questions and concerns about failover strategies, don't hesitate to reach out to Novotech.