Providing Affordable IT Management to SME's Availability Management - ARMSS
The last blog about Availability Management looked at four key areas:
1) How service levels are driven by availability figures
2) The five key components that should be considered is the system design phase (ARMSS) – can you remember what they are?
3) The extended incident lifecycle
4) The creation of an availability plan I promised that as part of the next instalment of this topic I would start to introduce this in the context of a small business and think that the ARMSS section is probably the best place to start as it scales to SME’s quite nicely.
Let’s consider two projects that could be encountered by a number of companies:
Project 1 – A sole trader with the introduction of a new laptop PC to be the only machine that will be used for the business
Project 2 – A small office with 5 PC’s. They are going to be networked with a basic file server and a networked printer
If we recap on the ARMSS aspect of availability management:
Availability – How the system is designed to keep it available (e.g. can it be remotely managed by the support teams, does it have two servers which are clustered)
Reliability – How much resilience is there in the components (e.g. does it run RAID 5 of the disks, does it have due power suppliers from different feeds etc)
Maintainability – How old are the components so if they fail, new ones can be purchased easily. Also is the service easy to access?
Serviceability - The type of support provided by the suppliers / support contracts
Security – The confidentiality, integrity and availability of the data
Looking at our two projects, a small business may wish to consider the following:
Project 1 (Laptop PC – single user) Availability – Very little that can be done here. The unit is a single standalone and unless some form of managed service is thrown in as part of the deal, you are really constrained to the capability of the machine. Availability could be broken down to an application and data level (e.g. if the basic data is backed up to CD or external hard drive on a regular basis and the laptop does fail, the data could be accessed by any machine running the same set of desktop tools.
Reliability – Once again, for a single unit, reliability at a component level is difficult. You don’t tend to get resilience at this level on a desktop asset so if the PSU goes or the hard drive fail’s generally the unit has had it. Manufacturers don’t tend to shout about failure rates so identifying “the most reliable” laptop is difficult
Maintainability – Now here is the first point we can influence…..Maintainability is about IF it goes wrong, how easy is it to fix. You need to consider two things
1) Availability of parts – things like batteries, Power Supplier, Motherboards, Hard drives and plastics. Normally a quick Google for these keywords and the model number of the machine you are thinking about buying will give you an indication of how easy and or expensive they are to track down
2) Can the problem be fixed by you or does it need an IT specialist or worse case, the manufacturer.
Understanding how your laptop can be fixed will give you an idea of how long you could be without it
Serviceability – Really leading on from maintainability, but looking at the specific support contracts that are available for your new laptop (e.g. is it a one or three year warranty, is it return to supplier, do you have to pay the shipping costs, do you have the option of a loan machine etc)
Security – What levels of security exist around the operating system if you had it stolen? E.g. does it rely on a password to log-on and how secure is this.
Project 2 – New network
Availability – A network for a small office is probably a simplistic affair and the introduction of remote management tools to get onto the routers may be over design, but you should ask the question of how the network is going to be managed if a fault occurs. You will probably find that it will involve someone visiting your site
Reliability – A simple network is made up of 2 key components. A number of routers / ports and cable linking them together. So if a router or port fails or you have an DIY man drill through a cable you may lose your network. When you are talking to your supplier about the network design you might want to ask about “redundancy” and wheter a primary and secondary network leg can be designed. This means that if you have a leg of your network fail, either manually or automatically a new leg can be implemented. (Think of it like a spider’s web – if you put your finger through part of it, the spider still has lots of routes to get to the other side)
Maintainability – Hopefully a new network should be built with new components. With the cost of CAT 5 cable and the other components such as routers being relatively low, a good network installation should last you for at least 10 years. You will need to expect a level of failure during this time and therefore your network should be designed to be maintained using commonly available components as opposed to bespoke items. If possible try to make the designed non vendor specific. When locating the components, think about access in the event of a service call being needed. It will be a trade off between covered access and having them where someone could easily switch them off by accident. This is especially relevant for power supplier for wireless router’s etc where it is all to common to have a network failure, only to have found that the cleaner has taken the plug out to do the vacuuming that morning !
Servicability – Dependent on who designed and installed the network, you will need to look at how it is supported. Options include yourself of a member of your staff, a local PC company, a business contact who knows a bit about networks or a specific network support company. Either way, if the networking capability of you PC’s is an important and critical part of your business, it would be worthwhile spending some time getting this support contract right (and tying it up with a good Service Level Agreement)
Security – More important if you are going wireless (although you should discuss the possibility of visitors having access to a hardwired network and the security methods that are employed). I am amazed when out driving in my car with my PDA switched in wireless mode, how many unsecured wireless networks I pick up.
These two project examples are typical of the types of IT decisions having to be made by SME’s every day. Hopefully by using the consideration of the ARMSS aspect of Availability management some of your decisions will drive a higher level of availability and less down time that originally planned.
23rd Nov 2009