availability

Definition of availability in The Network Encyclopedia.

What is Availability (in computer networking)?

The degree to which network resources operate without interruptions resulting from scheduled maintenance or unexpected failure. Microsoft Cluster Server (MSCS) is a tool for ensuring continuous uninterrupted 24 x 7 x 365 availability of network resources.

Availability has become an important issue in the modern Internet economy in which online electronic businesses are made or broken on the basis of reliable, fault-tolerant technologies. MSCS provides the basic platform for building high-availability e-business and electronic commerce applications that can compete in today’s world. MSCS can automatically detect when an application or server fails and restart it on the surviving cluster node in moments. Users connected to the server will experience only a brief pause in service.