The term high availability (HA) refers to a state where data and applications are highly available because software or hardware is in place to maintain the continued functioning in the event of computer failure. High availability can refer to any software or hardware that provides fault tolerance, but generally the term has become associated with clustering. Local clustering provides high availability through database and application failover.

Storage Foundation and High Availability Solutions (SFW HA) includes Storage Foundation and Cluster Server and provides the capability for local clustering.