MISSION CRITICAL

MISSION CRITICAL

Mission-critical systems are not software like any other. Most software may fail. Some even incorporate failure or inaccuracy as a standard mode of operation, such as the overbooking systems of transport companies. For years, TGV passengers have practiced the fantasies of overbooking without it bothering them too much. It is usual for a certain online sales or music site to be unavailable for a few seconds or even minutes, it does not bother anyone. If a payroll application makes late transfers, who will be sorry about it, except the unfortunate employees?

The situation is quite different for mission-critical systems. They cannot be unavailable or even provide a degraded service. Any failure will be detrimental to the company that provides the service, to its customers and to the operator’s supplier. Any failure will cause damage in terms of image, business, market share or sometimes much more. For mission-critical systems you must always be thinking in worst case scenario and not best case scenario.

This is why high availability is at the heart of the design and implementation of these systems. To be achieved, it requires not only solid skills from software providers but also a culture shared with operators that can be banking industry or others.

Rather than dealing with countless individual cases, it may seem useful to ask what are the principles on which a high availability system should be based, the foundations of its principles and the reasons for their effectiveness. Working on this list will make it possible to simply discriminate between architectures that can provide high availability and those that need to be eliminated and to quickly reject baroque or mannerist architectural creations by neo-experts.

I see seven of them and I think that with these simple principles, we can work seriously:

Read the rest of the article: https://www.lusispayments.com/news