Availability Management
Maintenance and Security
Even if we have designed our services correctly in accordance with the Availability Plan and all the necessary preventive measures have been taken, sooner or later, we will face a service interruption.
When this happens it is necessary to recover the service as quickly as possible to avoid its having an undesired impact on the agreed levels of availability.
Although responsibility for restoring the service lies with Incident Management, and recovery activities have to be coordinated by the Service Desk, Availability Management should offer advice through recover plans that take into account:
- The business's availability needs.
- The implications of the incident for the IT infrastructure and the processes necessary to restore the service.
Managing Maintenance Interruptions
Independently from the service interruptions caused by incidents, it is normally necessary to interrupt the service from time to time for maintenance and/or upgrading work.
These scheduled interruptions may affect the availability of the service and must therefore be carefully planned to minimise their impact.
In cases where the services are not 24/7 periods of inactivity should obviously be used wherever possible to carry out tasks that would cause degradation or interruption to service.
If the service is 24/7 and the interruption is essential, you must:
- Consult with the customer to determine the interval in which the service will affect his business least.
- Inform everyone involved sufficiently in advance.
- Include this information in the SLAs.
Security
One of the essential ingredients in obtaining high levels of reliability and availability is correct Security Management.
Security-related aspects must be taken into account at all stages of the process.
It is as important to determine when the service will be available as who will use it and how. Availability and security are interdependent and any failings in one of them will seriously affect the other.
