1. A method for enhancing throughput and fault-tolerance in a parallel-processing system, wherein the parallel-processing system comprises N computing nodes, the method comprising: receiving a task; partitioning the N computing nodes into M set-aside nodes and N-M primary computing nodes, wherein M≧1; and processing the task in parallel across the N-M primary computing nodes by, proactively monitoring the health of each of the N-M primary computing nodes; and if a node in the N-M primary computing nodes is detected to be at risk of failure, copying the portion of the task associated with the at-risk node to a subset of the M set-aside nodes; and processing the portion of the task in parallel across the subset of the M set-aside nodes while the N-M primary computing nodes continue executing.