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What is Managed Failover?
Key Takeaways: Definition of Managed Failover, Failover Configuration, How Long Does Failover Take?, Failover Deployment
Definition of Managed Failover
Managed Failover is a proactive solution that ensures your business data connection is always available by providing a backup internet circuit with automatic failover.
Failover is the process of automatically traversing internet data over a secondary circuit if your primary internet circuit fails. Network downtime can halt business operations and result in lost sales and productivity. Managed Failover ensures a reliable data connection is always available for your business to use.
Looking to add failover to your business network?
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Managed Failover Configuration
Blackfoot’s Managed Failover is configured as an active/passive solution, where active is your primary circuit and passive is your secondary circuit in case of failover.
The passive circuit can be serviced by any ISP, but for added protection from network outages, we recommend using a geographically and technology diverse carrier. This ensures your secondary circuit doesn’t leverage any part of the last mile or middle mile network of your primary provider. And if a carrier-wide outage occurs, both of your circuits won’t be impacted so you remain online. For ease, Blackfoot can supply your business with a diverse LTE secondary circuit.
How long does failover take?
Our reliable solution uses a failover device to monitor the heartbeat of your circuits for uptime. Both circuits are connected to our Meraki device and if monitoring senses that the primary circuit is no longer active, it will automatically failover and traverse traffic to the secondary circuit. Automatic failover kicks in if there is an outage of 30 seconds, so your network disruption will be less than a minute.
Our failover device will retry the failed connection periodically. However, if you want to ensure your primary circuit is restored as soon as possible, you can also leverage our team by adding Managed Connectivity to your failover solution. This allows Blackfoot to contact your internet provider on your behalf to resolve the outage with your primary circuit. As the owner and operator of a modern data and voice network, we're focused on up-time all day, every day — and our experts are well-equipped to speak geek with your ISP to get your primary circuit back up and running as soon as possible. With Managed Connectivity, Blackfoot will aggregate all internet circuits on your behalf and manage all vendor billing and troubleshooting. This simplifies things on your end, so you only work with one provider and receive one bill.
What about restoring your primary circuit?
Our failover device will retry the failed connection periodically. However, if you want to ensure your primary circuit is restored as soon as possible, you can also leverage our team by adding Managed Connectivity to your failover solution. This allows Blackfoot to contact your internet provider on your behalf to resolve the outage with your primary circuit. As the owner and operator of a modern data and voice network, we're focused on up-time all day, every day — and our experts are well-equipped to speak geek with your ISP to get your primary circuit back up and running as soon as possible. With Managed Connectivity, Blackfoot will aggregate all internet circuits on your behalf and manage all vendor billing and troubleshooting. This simplifies things on your end, so you only work with one provider and receive one bill.
How is failover deployed?
Managed Failover is quick to deploy, with a zero-touch configuration so none of your IT resources are needed! In addition, our device includes a basic firewall that provides secure connectivity with intrusion detection at the network perimeter. Depending on your security needs, you can also choose our enhanced solution that includes a more heavy-duty firewall. As your managed service provider, Blackfoot will support and manage the life of your failover device to ensure it’s working properly and always up to date.
Free up internal resources to focus on your core business by relying on Blackfoot Communications to support your network. Partner for Managed Failover to ensures your business data connection is always available.