A method of fault-tolerant process control, comprising: providing a network process control system in an industrial processing facility comprising a plant-wide network coupling at least one server to a plurality of computing platforms each including computing hardware and memory hosting at least one software application for simultaneously supporting at least one process controller and another process controller or an input/output (I/O) gateway, the plurality of computing platforms coupled to one another by a private path redundancy network, the private path redundancy network providing a hardware resource pool by connecting process controllers together that enables any one of a plurality of process controllers to be placed into service for a failed controller to function as a redundant controller to control the associated field devices, the private path redundancy network that is a high-speed network has a speed greater than the speed of the plant-wide network to enable the plurality of computing platforms to connect with the one another of the plurality of computing platforms; wherein at least some of the plurality of computing platforms are directly coupled by an input/output (I/O) mesh network to plurality of I/O devices to field devices that are coupled to processing equipment; detecting at least one failing device in the hardware resource pool, and utilizing the private path redundancy network, placing into service as a backup for the failing device another device at another of the plurality of computing platforms, where the another device provides another mission as a process controller or as an I/O gateway both immediately before and after the placing into service; and performing an initial synchronization after the placing in service, and then a slower synchronization compared to the initial synchronization to transfer a complete database in an atomic fashion while running as the backup. providing a network process control system in an industrial processing facility comprising a plant-wide network coupling at least one server to a plurality of computing platforms each including computing hardware and memory hosting at least one software application for simultaneously supporting at least one process controller and another process controller or an input/output (I/O) gateway, the plurality of computing platforms coupled to one another by a private path redundancy network, the private path redundancy network providing a hardware resource pool by connecting process controllers together that enables any one of a plurality of process controllers to be placed into service for a failed controller to function as a redundant controller to control the associated field devices, the private path redundancy network that is a high-speed network has a speed greater than the speed of the plant-wide network to enable the plurality of computing platforms to connect with the one another of the plurality of computing platforms; wherein at least some of the plurality of computing platforms are directly coupled by an input/output (I/O) mesh network to plurality of I/O devices to field devices that are coupled to processing equipment; detecting at least one failing device in the hardware resource pool, and utilizing the private path redundancy network, placing into service as a backup for the failing device another device at another of the plurality of computing platforms, where the another device provides another mission as a process controller or as an I/O gateway both immediately before and after the placing into service; and performing an initial synchronization after the placing in service, and then a slower synchronization compared to the initial synchronization to transfer a complete database in an atomic fashion while running as the backup.