Availability Management

Goal
To optimize the capability of IT infrastructure, services and supporting organization to deliver a cost effective and sustained level of availability enabling the business to meet their objectives Optimize to satisfy business objectives Cost effective availability Sustained level of availability Strive for improvement

Definitions
1. Availability Availability is the ability of an IT service or component to perform its required function at a stated instant or over a stated period of time Reliability Freedom from operational failure. The reliability of an entire IT service is determined by the reliability of each component within the IT infrastructure delivering the IT service

2.

Definitions
3. Maintainability The ability of an IT infrastructure component to be retained in, or restored to, an operational state 4. Serviceability Serviceability describes the contractual arrangements made with third party IT service providers to assure the availability, reliability and maintainability of IT services and components under their care.

Definitions
5. Resilience The capacity of an IT service to allow the continued operation of IT despite the incorrect functioning of one or more of its sub-systems 6. Security Deals with the confidentiality, integrity and availability of associated data 7. Vital business function (VBF) Vital business function is the element of a business process considered business critical.

Activities
1. Determining the availability requirements Determine the availability requirements from the business for a new or enhanced IT service and formulate the availability and recovery design criteria for the IT infrastructure Compiling the availability plan Producing and maintaining the availability plan that prioritizes and plans IT availability improvements

2.

Activities
3. Monitoring availability Monitoring and doing a trend analysis of the availability, reliability and maintainability of IT components 4. Monitoring maintenance obligations (serviceability) Monitoring the performance of external suppliers and the availability of the systems and services they support. This depends on the targets set for availability, reliability and maintainability for the IT infrastructure components that underpin the IT service

Availability Management Process

The scope of Availability Management covers the design, implementation, measurement and management of IT infrastructure availability Availability Management commences as soon as the availability requirements for an IT services are clear enough to be articulated. It is and ongoing process, finishing only when the IT service is decommissioned

Availability Management Process

1. Key inputs The availability requirements of the business Business impact for each vital business function Availability, reliability, maintainability requirements Service Level achievements against targets for each IT service that has an agreed SLA Incident, problem, configuration and monitoring data

Availability Management Process

2. Key outputs Availability and recovery design Agreed targets of availability, reliability and maintainability The monitoring requirements for IT components Availability plan for pro-active improvements IT infrastructure resilience and risk assessment Reports: availability, reliability and maintainability

Availability Plan
1. Goals, Objectives and deliverables The availability plan should include goals, objectives and deliverables and should consider the wider issues of people, process, tools and techniques along with the technology focus

Availability plan
2. Process maturity Actual levels of availability vs agreed levels of availability Progress to address shortfalls in availability Details of changing the availability requirements for the existing IT services Details of availability requirements for new IT services A forward looking schedule for the planned Systems Outage Analysis (SOA) assignments Regular reviews of SOA assignments A technology futures section to provide an indication of potential benefits

Security Considerations
1. Aim The aim of IT security is to obtain a balanced security in depth with justifiable controls implemented to ensure continued IT service within secure parameters

Security Considerations
2. Considerations Products and services must only be available to authorized personnel Products and services must be recoverable following a failure Physical access to computer and network equipment should be restricted authorized personnel only Logical access to software should be restricted to authorized personnel only Data must be available to authorized personnel at agreed times as specified in the SLA and/or the service catalogue

Incident life cycle

Start Detection Diagnosis Repair Recovery Restoration

Availability and Incidents

Availability of a service can be calculated from measured data taken from the incident logging. Mean time to repair MTTR
MTTR is the time measured between the moment an incident starts and the moment that incident is repaired

Mean time between failures MTBF

MTBF is the time between the repair of one incident and the start of the next incident

Mean time between system incidents MTBSI

The average elapsed time between the occurrence of one failure and the next failure

Calculating Availability
1. Considerations The general availability of a service is determined by the availability of the Configuration Items (CIs) of which the service consists. This will be a combination of hardware, software and environment components Calculation Availability is calculated by dividing the actual time that the service was available by the agreed time and multiplying the result by 100 to achieve a percentage. The actual time means the agreed time minus downtime.

2.

Relationship with other processes

IT service continuity management Problem management Capacity management Service level management Change management

Benefits
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. Single point of accountability for availability Services designed for availability Optimal usage and performance Reduction of failures Error correction to service enhancement IT adds value to business

Problems
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. Organizational commitment Management responsibility Requirement for unique availability process Appropriate authority levels Lack of resources Support tools

Costs
Personnel Development of availability plans

Metrics and Management Reports

1. Influencers The availability of the IT infrastructure components that deliver IT services to the business and their users are influenced by: The complexity of the IT infrastructure design The reliability of the IT infrastructure components and environment The IT support organization capability to maintain and support the IT infrastructure The levels and quality of maintenance provided by suppliers The quality, pattern and extent deployment of operational process and procedures

Metrics and Management Reports

2. Reporting perspectives
Reporting from IT perspective Percentage available Percentage unavailable Duration Frequency of failure Reporting from end user perspective: Frequency of downtime Duration of downtime Scope of impact Business driven measurement and reporting

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