Failover processing in storage server system utilizes policies for managing fault tolerance (FT) and high availability (HA) configurations. The approach encapsulates the knowledge of failover recovery between components within a storage server and between storage server systems. This knowledge includes information about what components are participating in a Failover Set, how they are configured for failover, what is the Fail-Stop policy, and what are the steps to perform when "failing-over" a component.