The Importance of High Availability for Mission Critical Workloads

28 May 2025, by Micron21

When it comes to running mission-critical workloads, downtime is not an option. Unavailability, even for a short time, can lead to lost revenue, damaged reputation, and operational chaos.  High Availability (HA) is the bedrock of ensuring your systems and services remain accessible and functional, even when challenges or failures arise. At Micron21, we pride ourselves on offering the most robust solutions for HA, making your business' critical workloads more reliable than ever.

Why Reliability Matters in Mission-Critical Infrastructure

Reliability is everything when the stakes are high. That's why at Micron21, we've built our services around an unyielding commitment to uptime. We became the first data centre in Australia to achieve "Tier IV" certification, the industry’s gold standard for data centre reliability. This isn’t just a badge of honour - it reflects our dedication towards delivering nothing less than 100% uptime for the infrastructure within our data centre.

Our Tier IV data centre operates with at least 2N+1 redundant infrastructure.  If you're unfamiliar with this kind of technical jargon, what this means in simple terms is that for every resource we need to keep your systems running (N), we have double the capacity (2N), plus an additional backup for good measure (+1).  So even if two failures were to occur simultaneously, your systems would still remain operational!

But we’ve gone further in many areas, implementing 3N redundancy for an added extra layer of risk mitigation. Our infrastructure is designed to ensure uninterrupted service, no matter the circumstances.

However, physical infrastructure is only half the battle when it comes to keeping your systems online. Virtualised workloads, the applications and databases running on top of servers, can also fail. This is where High Availability (HA) steps in for the ultimate safeguard.

What is High Availability?

High Availability (HA) refers to designing systems to remain accessible, even in the face of disruptions. Think of it as a failsafe for your workloads, ensuring minimal to no downtime. HA isn’t achieved through a single method - instead, it’s a result of layered redundancy and intelligent system design.

Some common implementations of HA include:

• Failover systems - If the primary system encounters an issue, backed-up replicas immediately take over to prevent service disruption.
• Load balancing - Distributes traffic across multiple systems running in parallel, ensuring no single server becomes a point of failure.
• Geographic replication - Copies data and workloads across multiple physical locations to protect against regional failures.

These strategies address specific vulnerabilities, such as hardware faults, software bugs, or even natural disasters, ensuring your services remain functional under various circumstances.

The Benefits of HA for Mission Critical Systems

The role of High Availability (HA) in maintaining operational continuity cannot be overstated.  A High Availability setup offers numerous benefits to organisations, starting with minimising downtime.  HA systems are designed to significantly reduce the risk of outages that could disrupt business operations or alienate customers.  In addition, they provide fault tolerance - so even in the event of a failure, redundant systems ensure a seamless experience for both staff and customers.

Another key advantage is the improvement of user experience. High Availability translates to consistent service delivery, enhancing user satisfaction and building trust. Data integrity is also safeguarded, as HA protects information by replicating it in real-time across multiple environments, thereby preventing data loss during incidents. While implementing HA does require an upfront investment, it ultimately leads to long-term cost savings by avoiding costly downtimes, reputational damage, and the need for emergency fixes.

The High Availability Myth with Public Cloud Providers

When businesses think about hosting their workloads on public cloud platforms like AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud, there’s often a false assumption that High Availability is built into their services. The term "cloud" can sometimes leave you with the impression that you no longer need to rely on server hardware and thus are no longer susceptible to the issues that can arise with it - however the reality is far different!

Public cloud providers rely on the same physical servers and data centres that are susceptible to failures like any other systems. Most standard cloud services provided by these platforms do not include HA by default.  If you rely on these setups without specifically configuring HA, an incident affecting their infrastructure could take down your workloads.

Implementing HA on public cloud platforms also requires specialist knowledge.  It involves duplicating systems, coordinating data synchronisation, and creating failover mechanisms.  This can lead to skyrocketing infrastructure costs and operational complexity, making HA implementation challenging and expensive for many businesses.

Micron21 mCloud Makes HA Easy 

At Micron21, we’ve simplified high availability with our unique mCloud platform.  Built on OpenStack and Ceph technology, mCloud offers leading-edge solutions that eliminate the complexities associated with HA configuration.

By default, every Virtual Machine (VM) running on mCloud is replicated across our infrastructure, ensuring automatic failover if the primary system fails. What’s more:

• Geographic Failover Made Simple - With mCloud, geographic replication across three Melbourne-based data centres is just as effortless. Mission-critical workloads can run seamlessly, even in the rare event of a complete site failure.
• No Specialised Knowledge Required - Unlike traditional public cloud setups, you don’t need an in-house expert to configure HA, as it’s built right into the mCloud service.
• Cost-Effective Solutions - Enjoy enterprise-grade HA without the exorbitant infrastructure costs typically associated with public cloud providers. Our architecture allows cost-effective scaling with minimal effort.

Why High Availability is Essential for Your Business

When it comes to production or mission-critical services, High Availability is a must-have, not a nice-to-have. The risks of downtime are simply too great to ignore. Whether you’re running an e-commerce platform, SaaS application, or internal systems, HA ensures operational continuity, safeguarding your revenue and customer trust.

Unfortunately, HA is not a standard offering with many of the hosting providers. Unless specifically configured, you’ll need to invest significant time and resources to build, implement, and maintain it yourself.

With Micron21's mCloud platform, High Availability is no longer complicated or costly.  We’ve designed our services to make HA accessible to businesses of all sizes, providing peace of mind and ensuring that your mission-critical systems stay online.

Next Steps for Your Business

Are you ready to elevate your infrastructure with High Availability?  At Micron21, we make it easy to safeguard mission-critical workloads with robust redundancy and cutting-edge technology.  Explore our mCloud platform for industry-leading HA solutions, or reach out to our team for personalised guidance.

For more information, contact us at sales@micron21.com or call 1300 769 972.  Discover how Micron21 can help future-proof your business today.