Chapter 3. Planning for System Availability

Identifying System Components

To improve system availability, first identify all the system components that work together to enable a user's application to run. A chain is only as strong as its weakest link. If your system has one component that is prone to failure, your entire system is prone to failure.

Most systems can be divided into the following elements:

  • Host or server—. This is the portion of the system where most data is stored or processed. The server fulfills transaction requests sent to it and sends the results to the requestor of the transaction. For example, in a bank Automated Teller Machine (ATM) system, the host is usually the bank mainframe system, or large server, that manages client ...

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