13.5. Key factors to consider in availability

Reliability is an attribute of a component or system and is typically defined as a probability of that component or system being up and running when it should be. It does not include the time when something is planned to be down. Availability focuses on the end user's perspective, which tends to be an “all or nothing” attitude. The system is either up and usable, or it is considered not available.

Most IT organizations include only unplanned outages (system crash) as part of their availability computations. High-availability systems usually have such stringent availability requirements that there is no distinguishing between planned (system administrator time) and unplanned outages. Some end user ...

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