What provides availability of a partner's physical resources during a node failover?

The availability of a partner's physical resources during a node failover is primarily provided by an HA Pair (High Availability Pair). In a NetApp storage system, an HA Pair consists of two nodes connected in such a way that they can work together to provide redundancy and maintain data availability. If one node fails, the other node in the HA Pair takes over its operations, ensuring that the services remain available and that there is minimal disruption to applications and users.

This design is crucial because it allows for seamless failover; the system is able to automatically redirect I/O operations to the surviving node, maintaining access to the stored data without requiring manual intervention. This high availability setup is integral for organizations that require continuous access to their storage resources, especially in environments where downtime is unacceptable.

Cluster Interconnect facilitates communication between nodes in a cluster but does not directly manage failover. Storage VMs are about logical separations of workloads and are not designed specifically for failover. The Data Protection Interface is focused on data management and protection strategies rather than the physical redundancy of nodes during a failover scenario.