Unplanned downtime is the bane of all IT departments. With the ever-increasing dependence on real-time information and 24/7/365 transaction processing, downtime strikes at the heart of corporate profitability and core mission success. Its highly visible nature inevitably leads to unhappy customers and upper management questions: Why did this happen? How can it be prevented? Don’t we already have procedures in place? When budget time arrives, however, the redundancies, staffing, and training are hard to come by. The systems get more complex, and the goal remains the same: keep the network up.

Understanding how to define high availability, setting achievable goals, and balancing costs form the beginning of a successful plan for maximum uptime.