A network administrator recently updated various network devices to ensure redundancy throughout the network. If an interface on any of the Layer 3 devices were to go down, traffic will still pass…

High availability (HA) is the concept of designing systems so they remain accessible despite individual failures, often achieved through redundant Layer 3 interfaces, failover protocols, and redundant paths. When traffic seamlessly reroutes through an alternate interface with no production impact, that is the textbook definition of high availability.

Load balancing distributes traffic across multiple paths or servers to optimize performance, not specifically to maintain uptime during a failure.

A backout contingency plan is a documented rollback procedure for reversing a failed change, not an automatic failover mechanism.

Clustering groups servers together to act as a single unit for compute or service availability, not the same as Layer 3 interface redundancy on network devices.