Definition
High availability design refers to the principles and practices used to ensure that a system or application remains operational and accessible with minimal downtime. It involves building redundancy and failover mechanisms into the system's architecture so that if one component fails, another can immediately take over. This approach is critical for business continuity, preventing data loss, and maintaining user trust by guaranteeing uninterrupted service. For instance, a financial trading platform employs high availability design to ensure trades can be executed without interruption, even during hardware failures. It is distinct from disaster recovery, which focuses on restoring operations after a catastrophic event rather than maintaining continuous uptime. Concepts related to high availability design appear in domains like cloud computing and cybersecurity certifications.