Introduction to High Availability
Basically High Availability is a combination of:
fault tolerance
load balancing.
To ensure performance and availability you can have two or more Agents form a High Availability (HA) configuration. In this configuration Agents share the load to ensure service availability in high peak loads. Fault tolerance enables a system to continue operating properly in the event of the failure in Agents. In case one Agent fails due to an error situation or is not available due e.g. operating system or technology platform maintenance there are other Agents operating and ensuring the Frends service is available.
High Availability (HA)
The HA configuration requirement is set by the criticality of the integration Process for the customer. The more critical the Process is the higher is the availability requirement. These considerations are taken up typically when designing Frends architecture for a new client or when there are new requirements from an existing client. Typically, HA is used in production Environments and sometimes in test and/or QA. Usually, if Frends Agents are used to deliver integrations to some critical or "real-time" case, for example mobile applications, it is advisable to use multiple Agents in production.
High Availability requires Agent configuration and Process design to get the best benefits and performance.
Example illustration of High Availability configuration
The next article is Introduction to Agent Configuration in HA Setup