Certified Reliability Engineer Practice Test 2026 – All-in-One Guide to Master Your Certification!

The basis for hardware fault tolerance centers around the idea of employing redundant components to manage and mitigate the consequences of hardware failures. Triple-modular redundancy is a specific strategy where three identical modules are used to perform the same function concurrently. This redundancy allows for the decision-making process to include a comparison of outputs from all three modules. If one module fails or produces a different output from the other two, the system can still continue to operate correctly by relying on the majority output. This majority voting mechanism inherently increases reliability, as it can effectively mask faults and ensure continued operation despite hardware issues.

In contrast, dual redundancy typically uses two modules, making it harder to isolate and agree upon a fault during a dispute of outputs, thus leading to a less reliable system compared to triple-modular redundancy. Single-modular efficiency does not provide redundancy at all, thereby missing the key advantage of fault tolerance. Server virtualization focuses on the management of resources rather than on direct hardware fault tolerance, and while it can contribute to availability in a broader sense, it does not inherently provide fault tolerance in the same way that triple-modular redundancy does.