Availability Management

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Goal – Primary Objective

• To optimise the capability of the IT

infrastructure and supporting
organisations to deliver a cost
effective and sustained level of
availability that enables the business to
satisfy its objectives

2
Principles
• Availability is at the core of business & end user
satisfaction

• When things go wrong, it is still possible to achieve

business & end user satisfaction

• Improving availability begins when it is understood

how IT services integrate with and support the
business

3
Why Availability Management

• To ensure services are available when the customer needs them

• Influences
– Business Demand
– Cost required to meet demand
• Complexity of IT Infrastructure
– Levels of Redundancy
– Reliability of the Infrastructure
– Level of Maintenance
• Processes and procedures used by Services
• Human Factors
– Skill sets

4
Responsibilities
• Determine availability requirements in business terms
• Predict and design for expected levels of availability
• Optimise availability through monitoring and reporting
• Produce Availability Plan – Long term for proactive improvement
• Ensure SLAs are met and monitor OLA/UC availability obligations
• Manage Service Outage Analysis (SOA)
• Produce and maintain:
- Component Failure Impact Analysis (CFIA)
- Fault Tree Analysis (FTA)

5
Considerations
• Availability Managed through OLAs

• Reliability Managed through UCs

• Maintainability
• Serviceability
• Resilience
- Related to Resource Capacity Management
• Security
- Confidentiality, Integrity, Availability (CIA)

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ITAMM – IT Availability Metrics
Model
• Range of metrics and perspectives that should be
considered when establishing Measurement and
Reporting
• Measurements need to be meaningful and add
value

• Consider WHAT you measure and HOW you report it

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Expanded Incident ‘lifecycle’
DOWNTIME or MeanTime To Repair (M)TTR

Incident Detection Diagnosis Repair Recovery Restoration Incident

UPTIME or MeanTime
Between Failures
(M)TBF

Time between system incidents (M)TBSI

Time

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Calculating Availability
AST - DT
X 100
AST

% Availability =

Further considerations:
• Components in series or parallel
• Weighting per number of users affected
• Weighting per criticality period
Measuring Availability
Measurements need to be meaningful and add value to the IT and business organisation.
It would be necessary to consider both what is measured and how it is reported

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Benefits
• Services are designed and managed to meet specified business
availability requirements
• Shortfalls in levels of availability are identified and corrective
actions taken
• Frequency and duration of IT failures is reduced
• Availability levels are measured to fully support Service Level
Management
• BUSINESS VALUE!
– Effective Availability Management will influence customer
satisfaction and determine the perceived Reliability of the
business on the market

10
AM

Exam Tips
• Remember the ABILITY
• RELIABILITY
• MAINTAINABILITY
• SERVICEABILITY
But NOT VULNERABIILITY (ITSCM)
• CIA (Confidentiality, Integrity and Availability)

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 Exam Questions
• Availability Management is responsible for ………..

• Understanding the reliability of components to carry out a

required function under given conditions over a certain period of
time
• The ease with which maintenance (Maintainability) of service
components can be carried out
• Negotiating availability levels with customers

Which of these is correct?

A Only 2 & 3
B Only 1 & 2
C 1, 2 & 3
D Only 1 & 3
Note ! 1 is definitely correct and 3 is definitely wrong (SLM)
2 is disguised!!!! 12
Exam Questions
• Percentage availability is calculated as:

A DT * 100 C (AST – DT) * 100

------------- ----------------------
AST AST

B AST * 100 D AST

------------- ---------------------
DT (AST – DT) * 100

Note! It just is – Remember it! Treat it as a gift

(100 – 20) * 100
------------ = 80%
100 13
Exam Questions
• In Availability Management terms, what do the
letters CIA stand for?

A Component Impact Analysis (ITSCM)

B Confidentiality, Integrity, Availability
C Configuration Item Availability
D Central Intelligence Agency (A contradiction in terms)

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Exam Questions
• Managing service availability is now more important
than ever because ……

A The dependence (Reliability – prevention of failure)

of customers on their IT has grown
B System Management tools can now provide much
more real time performance management information
C More IT systems are outsourced
D More service providers now have Service Level
Agreements with their customers

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