Failover is an automatic system within network architecture where you switch to a redundant or standby computer/server or other hardware component, this is done automatically in order to maintain continuous service. Such systems offer a very high degree of reliability with little or no disruption in service.

Redundancy is the duplication of critical components or functions to increase system reliability. In aircraft and crucial infrastructure critical systems are often triplicated. An error in one can be out voted by the other two (in computer systems for example) or all three must fail before the system fails. In a suspension bridge many cables are the form of redundancy. The likelihood of all failing before components are replaced is calculated to be extremely small when using parts with a known failure rate.

Clouds are a hardware-based platform as a service offering. This means that the operator never needs to worry about hardware, network, or updates as these are the responsibility of the cloud provider.

Adopting a cloud-based model, our software can work across many different platforms, and uses built-in load sharing and autoscaling to handle peaks in demand.  Multi-cloud platform deployment then allows for built-in disaster recovery so the solution has resiliency end-to-end and avoids “putting all the eggs in one basket”.

By using public cloud platforms, software can run on very large scale infrastructure where failover is simply a matter of moving our application stack from one instance to another.  Resiliency is made easy by issuing a few commands and spinning up additional resources, which could be on a separate cloud platform.  This resilient cloud architecture allows the placement of workloads that ensure the communities we work with can benefit from 99.999% availability of critical systems.

On a city wide scale in a system such as an energy grid, you may have multiple systems of generation, wind, coal, nuclear (redundancy); then you may have multiple interconnected grids. An example of this would be localised community energy production and city wide production. In a world where it is ever more important to ensure resilience, failover between two energy grids provides a very reliable solution. The ability for one to seamlessly support the other introduces a net increase in energy security for everyone.

Achieving social resilience requires the prioritisation of outcomes that facilitate a level of resource redundancy to allow systems to recover through failover onto alternative resources, so that they can keep operating. Resilience within contemporary security studies requires interdependence, complexity and connectivity. Complexity and interconnectivity ensure resilience. Interconnectivity and interdependence ensure resilience that can protect against both threats and risks. Should catastrophe occur, these resilient networks will lessen its impact, hugely increasing the resilience of individual communities and so also increasing the resilience of all communities. Social resilience cannot be achieved by ensuring environmental security and as such the adoption and proliferation of community green energy systems also helps to secure the environment for all of our benefit.