1. A redundancy based fault-tolerant system for providing at least one shelf management function for a shelf accommodating electronic components, the system comprising: at least two shelf management controllers associated with the shelf and disposed in an active-passive redundant configuration interconnected by a first connection link, the first connection link dedicated to communication between the at least two shelf management controllers, each shelf management controller communicatively coupled over at least a second connection link to at least one controlled device on the shelf and over at least a third connection link to at least one satellite controller located remotely from each of the at least two shelf management controllers, wherein each of the at least two shelf management controllers, the at least one controlled device and the at least one satellite controller is configured to communicate using an internal communication protocol associated with it; and a machine readable medium communicatively coupled to at least one access controller, the machine readable medium configured to store at least one data element and at least one instruction and is accessible to each of the at least two shelf management controllers via the access controller, wherein the access controller is configured to control access to, and to enable dynamic programming and reconfiguration of, the at least one data element and the at least one instruction, the at least one instruction is available to be executed by each of the at least two shelf management controllers and configured upon execution to implement an abstracted channel to allow the at least two shelf management controllers to communicate using messages carried over at least one of the connection links with a selected one of the at least one controlled device on the shelf and the at least one satellite controller to cause the shelf management controller to provide the at least one shelf management function despite incompatibilities between respective internal communication protocols associated with the at least two shelf management controllers, the at least one controlled device and the at least one satellite controller; wherein one of the at least two shelf management controllers is active and the other passive; and wherein the active shelf management controller provides the at least one shelf management function until a fail-over when the passive shelf management controller provides the at least one shelf management function.