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How to Build a Highly Available, Fault-Tolerant Network Infrastructure

  • hamed mazrouei, podcast
Hamed Mazrouei discusses how to build a fault-tolerant network infrastructure using SD-WAN

Why Highly Available Network Infrastructure Matters

Network outages in today’s digitally connected business landscape can result in severe operational disruptions and revenue loss. Hamed Mazrouei, founder and CEO of Milagro Corporation, shares his expertise in designing highly available, fault-tolerant network infrastructures that keep organizations operational, even during hardware or connectivity failures. Hamed focuses on building complete redundancy with automated recovery mechanisms, ensuring seamless business continuity. This article explores his journey from initial concepts to scalable solutions deployed with cutting-edge technologies.

Key takeaways:

  • Design networks to cover every failure point, from ISPs to hardware.
  • Build partnerships with technology providers for seamless failover and QoS.
  • Challenge assumptions to continuously innovate and improve uptime.

Designing for Every Point of Network Failure

Hamed emphasizes the importance of considering every possible failure point in a network architecture. Early redundancy efforts often focus solely on internet failover; however, true fault tolerance must extend deeper. “Our question was, okay, great. You’ve got redundancy there. What if the firewall fails? What if the switch fails? How do you ensure continuous operation even with hardware failure?” he explains.

This mindset led to developing a platform that doubles critical equipment, placing devices in active-active configurations to prevent single points of failure. The result is a network infrastructure where outages at any node or piece of hardware do not impact customers or business operations. Such a comprehensive design is essential for organizations dependent on uninterrupted connectivity, particularly in healthcare, retail, and legal services.

Making Fault-Tolerant Network Design Affordable for SMBs

Initially built for larger enterprises with significant budgets, Hamed’s team tackled the challenge of making fault-tolerant networks accessible to smaller businesses. They balanced automation with manageable manual interventions through a hybrid design approach, allowing the platform to be deployed cost-effectively.

“I’m a big proponent of making everything active because you’re paying for it anyway. You might as well utilize it fully instead of waiting for a failure to trigger a backup plan,” Hamed says. By consolidating active devices and reducing over-automation, which adds less value, the platform’s deployment cost dropped from thousands to just a few hundred dollars monthly, enabling restaurants and SMBs to maintain uptime without breaking their budgets.

Using SD-WAN to Maximize Performance and Uptime

A pivotal element in Hamed’s architecture is integrating Bigleaf’s SD-WAN technology, which adds dynamic routing, continuous health monitoring, and automatic Quality of Service (QoS). “The moment we installed Bigleaf’s SD-WAN device, everything normalized, and the problems disappeared,” Hamed recounts.

This solution automatically prioritizes real-time traffic, such as video calls, over bulk downloads, ensuring mission-critical communications stay uninterrupted even during network congestion. The technology’s active monitoring and dynamic failover capabilities provide peace of mind that networks will adapt proactively to changing conditions, a crucial factor in sustaining modern business operations.

Conclusion: Future-Proofing with Resilient Network Infrastructure

Building truly fault-tolerant networks demands more than basic internet failover; it requires holistic design, strategic partnerships, and intelligently adaptable technology. Hamed’s HAFT platform embodies this approach, delivering continuous operation across multiple failure scenarios while scaling affordability for smaller businesses. His mantra, “Always ask why not,” challenges organizations to defy perceived limitations and innovate toward resilience. As connectivity becomes the backbone of business, such forward-thinking designs will be critical to maintaining competitive advantage and operational stability.

Based on a podcast interview with Hamed Mazrouei, Founder and CEO of Milagro Corporation.

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