The invention discloses a hotspare method and a system suitable for a device for processing and forwarding an IP media stream in real time. The method comprises the following working steps that: (1) two devices are simultaneously accessed to a network, wherein one is configured as a main machine, while the other one is configured as a slave machine; (2) the main machine and the slave machine synchronously operate and simultaneously process the IP media stream; the main machine processes, forwards and outputs the IP media stream; the slave machine only processes the IP media stream without forwarding and outputting the IP media stream; (3) the main machine periodically sends a heartbeat signal to the salve machine through a heartbeat communication interface; and (4) the slave machine carries out real-time monitoring in a working state of the main machine through the heartbeat communication interface; when the slave machine detects the fault of the main machine, the slave machine immediately replaces the main machine and outputs the processed IP media stream; when the slave machine detects that main machine recovers to the normal state, the slave machine immediately stops outputtingany IP media stream; and the main machine takes charge of the processing and the forwarding of the media stream again. According to the method and the system, when the main machine has the fault, thesystem can detect the problems and rapidly switch in time, has short response time and is in particular applicable to the hotspare requirement of IPTV and other live servers.