Redundancy in Cloud Computing: Key Benefits and Considerations

Cloud computing allows you to duplicate data, systems, and equipment to ensure system downtime won’t prevent you from keeping your business running. Redundancy in cloud computing provides a variety of benefits to chip designers.

Types of Redundancy in Cloud Computing

Process Redundancy 

To run a business, you must have processes within a digital architecture available. Some of these processes are more important for a business. You can figure which processes are most relevant to you by mapping out all the processes in your company and determining which require the most availability.  

It can be tempting to seek 100% availability for all processes, but that would necessitate fully redundant solutions for every process node, which can be costly. Instead, you should determine the appropriate level of service reliability by assessing the importance of each service to your company. 

Network Redundancy 

To determine redundancy, ask yourself the following questions:  

• Are there multiple routes to the internet?  
• Can another provider take over and handle the traffic if one goes down?  

Be sure to read your cloud providers’ SLAs, especially ones regarding bandwidth, redundancy, and availability. Keep in mind that you don’t necessarily receive network redundancy by using different providers. Some providers only deliver last-mile connectivity, relying on the same backbone as everyone else. 

Hardware-Level Redundancy 

Hardware redundancy refers to the fault tolerance of the machinery that runs the software. This can include contact center applications, collaboration tools, or customer databases. Hardware redundancy is mainly determined by cost. You can either co-locate your own devices or hire one of the major cloud providers to build, maintain, and design your environment for you. Depending on the cloud provider’s expertise and your business needs, you can choose to mix both methods. 

Geographic Redundancy 

In the cloud, geographical redundancy in cloud computing replicates data between two or more different locations. These data centers should be far enough apart so that if one gets hit by a natural disaster, the other will stay safe and secure.

Cloud Redundancy and Chip Design

When it comes to chip design and verification, redundancy is an essential feature of any IT infrastructure. By relying on the cloud, you can replicate your data and IP at multiple redundant sites on your cloud provider’s network. You can then back up the data and recover it from disaster more efficiently.

With redundancy in cloud computing, you can remove single points of failure for your chip-making process. You can either implement redundancy in standby mode—where you maintain functionality even during a power outage—or in active mode—where you distribute requests to multiple redundant compute resources.

For chip designers, redundant cloud deployment is scalable, elastic, and fast. You can leverage redundancy to improve performance, collaborate, and manage projects.