Data and application downtime can be attributed to the unavailability, or failure, of a resource that is trying to run a service. If a service becomes unavailable and an organization is not running clustering and storage management software the users would lose access to the resource until the problem can be manually fixed. This downtime may result in lost revenue, productivity and user satisfaction. Storage management software can assist in decreasing data downtime associated with disk and path failures by ensuring multiple copies of data are accessible and available.

    Clustering services can protect against server, application and database downtime by eliminating the single point of failure found within a single server. A cluster is a group of computers that work together to run a set of applications and provide the image of a single system to the client and application. The computers are physically connected by cables and programmatically connected by cluster software. The servers within the cluster remain in constant communication. If one of the servers or resources running on the server in a cluster becomes unavailable as a result of failure or maintenance, another server immediately begins providing service, a process known as failover. Users can continue to access the service and are unaware that it is now being provided from a different physical server.