According to certain aspects, an information management cell with failover management capability can include secondary storage computing devices configured to conduct primary data from a primary storage device(s) to a secondary storage device(s) during secondary copy operations, at the direction of a remote storage manager, wherein a first secondary storage computing device implements a failover storage manager configured to, in the event of a loss of connectivity between the cell and the remote storage manager: access a stored storage policy; initiate a first secondary copy operation according to the storage policy in which the first secondary storage computing device is involved in the creation of a first secondary copy on the secondary storage device(s); and initiate a second secondary copy operation according to the storage policy in which a second secondary storage computing device is involved in the creation of a second secondary copy on the secondary storage device(s).