Active-Passive Configuration

An active-passive server cluster contains a minimum of two servers. One server actively runs applications and services. The other is idle. If the active server fails, then its workload is switched to the idle server, which then takes over application processing.

Because the standby server is idle, active-passive server clusters require additional hardware without providing additional active capacity. The benefit of active-passive clusters is that, after a failover, the same level of hardware resources is available for each application, thereby eliminating any performance impact on users. This benefit is particularly important for performance-critical areas such as the database. The most common use of active-passive clusters is for database servers.

This topic is part of About Server Clustering.