Fault-tolerant Hardware Versus Software

On heavily-loaded computers running Windows NT Server, there might be advantages to using a hardware solution for mirror sets or stripes set with parity. Or you might want to select a different type of RAID array. There are many factors involved, which depend on the specific site, hardware being used, and the load on the computer running Windows NT Server.

Here are some points to consider when deciding whether to implement fault tolerance in hardware or software.

• Fault-tolerant software is available only on Windows NT Server.
• Hardware fault tolerance is faster.
• Software fault tolerance is less expensive.
• A hardware fault tolerance solution might lock you into a single vendor.
• 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.