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SPOF

Webopedia Staff
Last Updated May 24, 2021 7:55 am
Short for single point of failure, a generic phrase for any component of a system that upon failure will cause a malfunction in the entire system. A SPOF can be a hardware or electrical component or a software component.

Each time a system expands (e.g., adding a workstation to a network or adding a new application to a network of workstations) the number of places where an SPOF can occur also expands. Typically, systems with redundancy will still operate with an SPOF.