Availability Management Policy

From IT frameworks

This policy defines optimum availability for the various services. The policy covers only the most important standards for Availability Management.

The Availability Manager must aim to have the service availability up to the requirements set by the SLAs. The SLAs dictate the system requirements for availability. This policy gives some guidelines to how that is best achieved.

Critical services and systems

The Availability Manager has the responsibility for marking the appropriate services and systems as Business Critical. The Availability Manager must see to it that all business critical services and systems have:

1. Proper redundancy
2. Monitoring of availability (according to the SLA)
3. A defined MTRS (Main Time to Restore Service)
4. Procedures for restoring service components in the case of unavailability
5. Proper backup and restore routines (coordinate with ITS Continuity Management and Information Security Management)
6. A test platform and proper release procedures for upgrades (coordinate with Release and Deployment Management and Validation and Testing Management)
7. Proper security to ensure that availability is not compromised by security breeches (coordinate with Information Security Management, refer to the security policy)
8. Underpinning contracts with vendor(s) to ensure availability
9. An entry in the Service Catalogue so that the service is indeed available to the customers (if relevant)

Non-critical services and systems

Where the SLA for non-critical services and systems does not give a set standard, the Availability Manager must still ensure that they have:

1. Basic monitoring of availability
2. Basic backup and restore routines
3. Basic security
4. Underpinning contract with vendor(s) in case the IT department does not have the proper competence in-house
5. An entry in the Service Catalogue (if relevant)

Every autumn, the Availability Manager submits an availability plan to Change Management for the next year.