Yes, back then mirrored servers was the sort of thing done by DEC at very high cost, so the SFT idea was a good try at a lower cost but did have that unfortunate requirement to be a very homogeneous environment. Then again, in my experience so did the higher end stuff as well, but the variability was lower in that high cost environment.
I tried the SFT way once but decided it wasn't necessary in a file server environment as long as one kept sufficiently frequent backups. The file focused nature meant that large amounts of data weren't at risk. Novell servers weren't that often used for database hosting.
Funnily enough we looked at Windows NT as an alternative F&P solution and concluded that it was absolute garbage compared to a Novell installation well through into the 2000's. Even had an MS "evangelist": tout its security advantages until one of my peers pointed out that the "high" security rating only applied when the NT server was running in an air-gapped environment and wasn't connected to any other system. If there were connections the rating changed to very poor.
Biggest problem sticking with Novell through the late 1990's was the sabotage campaign the MS conducted as it used undocumented procedure calls and hidden features to disable Novell client connections on PC's. This wasn't revealed as an active campaign until much later, and at the time people tended to blame Novell, which was rather MS';s intent and did help (in my environment) promote the desire to change over to Windows server despite the inadequacies and heavy footprint of AD at the time.