Wiley CIAexcel Exam Review 2014: Part 3, Internal Audit Knowledge Elements

(H) Preventive Maintenance

The regular practice of preventive maintenance of computer equipment and other system components will provide the assurance of continuity of computing services to end users. Here computer equipment includes the CPU, printers, terminals, and disk/tape drives. Other system components include physical channels, control units, cables, air conditioning units, uninterrupted power supply machines, and other mechanical/electrical devices.

The operations manager first needs to analyze the failure rates for each of the computer equipment and system component parts. After knowing the failure rates, the manager should determine the impact of failing equipment or a component on the completion of application system production job schedule. Component failure rates and impact analysis will allow the manager to shift the processing schedules either manually or automatically to balance the workload. Mean time between failures should be determined for each piece of computer equipment and the system components.

The output of component failure rates and impact analysis can be used to establish system availability objectives and service levels between hardware vendors and computer operations management. Here are some examples of system availability objectives:

• The CPU should be available for 99% of all scheduled production time.
• Disk/tape drives should be available for 98% of scheduled time
• Terminals and printers should be available for 95% of the time.

A preventive maintenance ...