THE RISE OF THE INTERNET, sophisticated computing and communications technologies, and globalization have raised customers’ expectations of powerful “always on” services. A crucial characteristic of these “always on” services is that they are highly available; if the customer cannot get a search result, or order a product or service, or complete a transaction instantly, then another service provider is often just one click away. As a result, highly available (HA) services are essential to many modern businesses, such as telecommunications and cable service providers, Web-based businesses, information technology (IT) operations, and so on.

Learn how to model, predict, and manage system reliability/availability throughout the development life cycle

Written by a panel of authors with a wealth of industry experience, the methods and concepts presented here give readers a solid understanding of modeling and managing system and software availability and reliability through the development of real applications and products. The modeling and prediction techniques and tools are customer-focused and data-driven, and are also aligned with industry standards (Telcordia, TL 9000, ISO, etc.). Readers will get a clear understanding about what real-world reliability and availability mean through step-by-step discussions of:

• System availability
• Conceptual model of reliability and availability
• Why availability varies between customers
• Modeling availability
• Estimating parameters and availability from field data
• Estimating input parameters from laboratory data
• Estimating input parameters in the architecture/design stage
• Prediction accuracy
• Connecting the dots

This book can be used by system architects, engineers, and developers to better understand and manage the reliability/availability of their products; quality engineers to grasp how software and hardware quality relate to system availability; and engineering students as part of a short course on system availability and software reliability.