When you use a replica to backup from so you don't have to turn off the master, is this considered High Availablity?

I read somewhere that MySQL can have a master / slave setup in which the master database can continue to run live and in production while the slave database can be turned off to snatch a backup. And then when the backup is complete, the slave database can be turned back on, and all the changes made in the master will be replicated over.

Is this considered high availability? Or does this also require that if the master fails, the slave take over? Or does that require something like vMotion from VMware?