*4.2. Backup Agent*

The Main Container (MC) is the special node which the agent platform relies on. It coordinates between the other nodes and hosts the AMS and the DF. Since this node is very critical, if it terminates or fails to connect to other containers, some vital operational features can become unavailable, and this severely hampers the platform [40]. In order to strengthen the agent platform and make it more reliable, a fault tolerant structure is implemented. It can be observed from Figure 4 that there are two MC in the agent platform. Replication support for MC has been introduced. Using this support, it is also possible to duplicate as many as MC in the system. These MC arrange themselves in a logical ring so that whenever one of them fails, the others will notice and act accordingly [18].

**Figure 4.** The fault tolerance mechanism in MAS platform.
