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