service is generally referred to as a failover process in some embodiments of the present invention the failover process may include three types of failover operations that each covers a possible disaster situation in a first situation herein referred to as a migration both the primary and failover sites are available and the service is switched from the primary site to the failover site during the migration operation the application providing the service at the primary site is first shutdown followed by any necessary data replication before the application is started at the failover site in a second situation herein referred to as a takeover the primary site is unavailable thereby preventing an orderly shutdown of the application at the primary site or any necessary data replication to the failover site the primary site may become unavailable for a variety of reasons such as for example a power loss at the primary site interruption of a communication link between the primary site and the organization 39 s intranet or physical damage to the servers or data storage devices at the primary site during the takeover operation the application is started at the failover site in a third situation herein referred to as a failback the service is being provided by the failover site and the service is switched back to the primary site during the migration operation the application providing the service at the failover site is first shutdown followed by any necessary data replication before the application is started at the primary site authorization to initiate a failover is tightly controlled and.