SPOF
Technology & Computing abbreviation · Cloud Computing
| Stands for | Single point of failure |
|---|---|
| Categories | Technology & Computing |
SPOF stands for Single point of failure, a cloud computing abbreviation.
Any component whose failure would stop an entire system, such as a lone database server, one network link, a single power supply or even one person with unique knowledge. Reliability engineering aims to remove them.
Example: The DNS provider turned out to be our SPOF when its outage took every service offline.
Usage notes
Common fixes include redundancy, failover and spreading resources across zones and providers. Hidden SPOFs often lurk in shared dependencies such as an identity provider, a certificate or a configuration service. Architecture reviews and chaos engineering exercises help reveal them.
Related abbreviations
More cloud computing abbreviations
- S3 – Simple Storage Service
- SaaS – Software as a service
- SLA – Service-level agreement
- SLI – Service-level indicator
- SLO – Service-level objective
- SNS – Simple Notification Service
- SQS – Simple Queue Service
- SRE – Site reliability engineering
- SSE – Server-side encryption
- vCPU – Virtual central processing unit
- VDI – Virtual desktop infrastructure
- VM – Virtual machine