8.5 AVAILABILITY MANAGEMENT (1)
Question 1:
To express service availability in percentage terms alone is now generally regarded as less than adequate.
a) How might target availability be better expressed? (8 marks)
b) What are the difficulties of predicting and monitoring availability expressed in these terms? (12 marks)
Answer Strategy: a) By user experience: downtime, performance issue. Based on business experience: VBF, transaction volume, revenue… b) Data availability, linkage between system data and business impact, ownership of those data and issue; total picture, integration between those data with IT component data. ..
Question 2:
Availability Management includes some responsibility for the contracts underpinning service levels
a) List the typical contracts that might be involved (6 marks)
b) Describe in detail the difficulties that might be faced by someone in an organisation planning to adopt ITIL based Availability Management practices. (14 marks)
Answer Strategy: A) WAN, Web Hosting, Print Service.. List and Describe B) Problems/Difficulties: use environment concept.PPT.
Question 3:
a) Define the key reports that you would be expected to produce as an ITIL-conformant availability manager. Describe frequency, intended audience and content. (12 marks)
b) What issues would an availability manager face in a constantly changing environment? (8 marks)
Answer Strategy: a) Availability Service Level Report / Incident Report / Problem Report / User Experience Downtime Report
b )Constant Changing environment: Use availability activity to handle it
Requirement collection issue: BIA and risk assessment issue; Design Issue ( high cost);
Reporting and auditing issue; releasing availability plan issue….
Question 4:
Availability Management is concerned with the availability of the whole of the IT Infrastructure. Describe how this activity might be applied to people and documentation and what metrics might be used to monitor those configuration items. (20 marks)
Answer Strategy: User Availability Activity to start the thinking process:
Requirement -> BIA and VBF -> Define targets -> Availability Measures and report -> Monitoring -> Problem/Incidents -> Develop availability plan
Apply to People and Document.
Metrics -> just imagine.
Question 5:
Over the last month, the availability of a business critical application has fallen to an unacceptable level. This was due to a series of failures of a fileserver, which has now been traced to a faulty hardware component, which has now been replaced.
a) What steps can you take to ensure that a similar problem is unlikely to happen again, and who will you need to involve. (12 marks)
b) Draft a letter of apology to the Business Manager who owns the application, outlining your proposals. (8 marks)
Answering Strategy – Measures of Availability – CFIA/ CRAMM/SOA/TOP/Continue Improvement/FTA/Extended Incident Lifecycle
Question 6:
a) Describe “downtime” from a customer’s perspective. (6 marks)
b) How and why might this differ from the perspective of an IT department (6 marks)
c) Why is it essential that a clear definition of downtime exists which both the customer and the IT department can agree upon. (8 marks)
Answer Strategy: a/b) difference of different downtime. c). guiding principle of availability, service level. Performance tracking…
