Fault Tolerance

Aloha offers complete system fault tolerance for the Back of House (BOH) fileserver, Front of House (FOH) terminals, and Electronic Draft Capture (EDC) for credit cards. Also called redundancy, in the event of a critical system failure the point of sale system can detect the fault, alert the user, and automatically reconfigure system resources to continue operations without losing data. Further, when the failure is corrected, the system can transfer data generated during the outage to the appropriate locations and perform all necessary transactions.

Important Note: The redundancy mode of Aloha fault tolerance is not intended to replace normal system processes—it is designed to continue operations in the presence of a significant system fault that otherwise could impair or halt business operations. As such, a system in redundancy typically requires the attention of a trained service technician to restore transactions and diagnose and repair the critical underlying technical issues that caused the original system outage. As such, systems in redundancy require the immediate attention by trained technicians to ensure continued data integrity and future system reliability.

Typical Aloha Point of Sale Network

Fileserver Redundancy
If the BOH fileserver malfunctions, an FOH terminal automatically assumes the role as the temporary fileserver as the Master Terminal. The message ‘The File Server is down’ appears on the all FOH terminals. The Master Terminal displays a ‘Make File Server’ button. While the Master FOH terminal is acting as the fileserver, it will still run the EOD. The terminal remains as the fileserver (including after EOD) until the BOH fileserver is recovered.

Order Entry and Master Terminals Redundancy
The FOH supports two forms of fault tolerance: Master Terminal and full network failure.  If FOH terminals lose network connectivity with the Master Terminal/fileserver, terminals detect the fault and automatically reconfigure. The message ‘Master Terminal is down, trying to recover’ appears. Each terminal becomes both stand alone Master Terminal and fileserver. System operation continues.  Each terminal remains as Master Terminal and fileserver until a system refresh or EOD process. As the network is restored, the terminals synchronize their data and elect a single Master Terminal and fileserver.

Credit Card Redundancy
In the event the EDC fileserver malfunctions, the EDC application spools credit card transactions and generates ‘offline’ credit card authorizations. During normal operation, credit card transactions are processed through the EDC application on the fileserver. If the connection to the internet is lost, the fileserver starts a process called “spooling” which stores all credit card transactions until the connection is back up. When the Internet connection is back up, all spooled credit card transactions are processed. If the fileserver goes down, a terminal becomes Master Terminal / fileserver and spools credit cards. If the network goes down, each terminal acts as a stand alone Master Terminal / fileserver and spools credit card transactions. When the network is restored, all spooled credit card transactions are processed automatically.

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