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Proactive Availability Management Techniques - CFIA

Component Failure Impact Analysis (CFIA) is a proactive availability management technique which was developed by IBM in the 1970’s. This technique allows us to predict the impact on our services if any of the individual components fail. It points out our vulnerabilities to single points of failure. Doing a CFIA is a pretty simple exercise. Here are the steps: Take certain key Configuration Items (CI)s in the infrastructure and identify the services that they support by researching the Configuration Management System (CMS).  If you do not have a CMS, look for paper diagrams, network configurations, any available documentation and general knowledge. Create a paper or electronic table or spreadsheet.  List the CIs in the first column, and the Services in the top row.  For every CI, place an “X” in the column below the service if that CI's failure would cause an outage.   Mark an “A” when the CI has an immediate backup (hot start) or a “B” when the CI needs a warm start. The basic

Component Failure Impact Analysis

Availability Management balances business availability requirements against the associated costs. So, should we consider availability requirements before the service has been designed and implemented or after?  The Availability Management process should begin in the Service Strategy stage of the lifecycle and continue in each stage of the service lifecycle. Availability Management ensures that the design approach takes two distinctive but related perspectives. Designing for availability focuses on all aspects of the technical design of the IT service. Designing for recovery ensures that in the event of a service failure, the business can resume normal operations at normal as quickly as possible. One of the techniques that can be invaluable to both perspectives is the Component Failure Impact Analysis (CFIA). The CFIA can be used to predict and evaluate the impact a component failure can have on its related IT service. This activity identifies areas of weakness or fragility within