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Our software "knows" to migrate itself to spare hardware in case the main hardware is damaged. The process of such a migration is called failover.

When the main hardware is repaired the software can migrate itself back to it. How would you call such a process?

We thought about "fail-back" (to stress it's a reverse of fail-over) and "fallback".

Thank you!

LiMar
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    Failback seems to have some acceptance. – KillingTime Apr 13 '21 at 11:36
  • Hello, LiMar. 'Repatriation' is a metaphorical usage that springs to mind: pretty clear, if a little high-flown. But ELU's remit is to look at and try to explain established usages; suggested candidate words / usages do not fulfil the 'can be supported by research' requirement. – Edwin Ashworth Apr 13 '21 at 11:37

1 Answers1

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The strict opposite of “failover” is “failback”. Both can be hyphenated or not; just be consistent about it.

Note that failback means that B will switch back to A automatically when A is available again. If B remains active until it fails, then your system doesn’t have failback; it has double failover.

StephenS
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