1.4 Considerations for implementing High Availability solution

Important: High Availability of eCommerce sites does not simply mean that they remain online, but that they must continue to provide a high level of performance.

The level of High Availability that a business requires is dictated by the business requirements. So, in this sense the level of High Availability is a relative term. High Availability for eCommerce sites has some specific requirements above and beyond the site simply being online. Here we define what High Availability entails in context of eCommerce sites.

Many High Availability implementations focus on failover and disaster recovery. However, a system must also ensure continuous capacity and performance as defined by its business requirements. This is especially true for eCommerce sites.

You also need to monitor your system proactively so that any change in workload, say due to aging data or a change in the distribution and type of incoming user traffic, and so on, does not lead to degradation in performance or risk to High Availability. Monitoring capability and performance tuning is thus an integral part of implementing a High Availability solution.

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