Fault-Tolerant Hardware Versus Software

The following are points to consider when deciding between a fault-tolerant hardware or software solution:

• Fault-tolerant software is available only on Windows 2000 Server.
• Hardware fault tolerance is faster.
• Software fault tolerance is less expensive.
• In a hardware fault tolerance implementation, some vendors support hot-swappable disks when there is a disk failure.

Regardless of whether you implement fault tolerance by using hardware or software, implementing fault tolerance does not reduce the need for backups.

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