Two servers active...but also as backup?

[scheuri]

Hi everyone

My apologies if my question has been asked and answered many times (please let me know the article, thanks).
After some time in the support forum I picked up some information regarding two servers (active) and backup serves which appear somehow contradicting each other.

So please allow me to ask:
I have two usenet servers which I'd like to use both active (for the speed).
So what I understand is, that those two server are sharing the load. If I have several files to download, they will do distribute the load (one provider downloading one file, the other one another file).
If one of the servers run into an issue (some parts are missing from the file being downloaded from that server), what happens then? Does the other server take care of that? Or do I need to configure those two servers again (this time as backup) so that the missing files are looked for somwhere else?*
*in that case I would end up with four servers, two each...once with and once without the backup parameter.

Thanks for your help

[shypike]

As long as at least one of the servers has an article, it will always be retrieved.

[scheuri]

Thanks a lot, much appreciated