[Teas-ns-dt] Availability

[Eric Gray <[e-mail]>]

I agree that the definition needs to be cleaned up, but I disagree that it should be omitted.

A part of what probably should be cleaned up is the part that talks about service degradation.  In general, this is an important factor in determining availability, but it is a bit vague for the purpose of definition.

I also disagree that availability is not measurable.

As a proof of concept for measuring , if there are any mandatory measurable objectives, then failing to meet any of those objectives makes the service measurably unavailable.  That is, if you can determine if specific mandatory objectives are being met, then you can determine if they are not being met and therefore determine if the service is unavailable.

Availability is an important aspect of any service, because it is understood that the higher the required availability, the more difficult (and thus expensive) it is to provide that service.

Defining availability as a fraction as we have done in the draft, allows for services that may experience a certain amount of outages over a service period.  A service request may ask for as high an availability as the provider and requester have agreed to (under the terms they agreed to) in advance.

Note that this elevates the importance of having (at least mostly) measurable objectives, simply because you cannot determine if a non-measurable objective is being met - hence you cannot (necessarily) determine the availability of any service that depends on that objective.

It is further interesting to note that the notion of a service depending on objectives that it cannot determine are not being met is a non-sequitur.

Measuring availability in terms of mandatory objectives - as a whole - is the simplest approach; one could group one or more mandatory objectives and define an availability separately for the group - thus allowing for a higher degree of acceptance for failing to meet one set of service objectives compared to others.

If we were going to do that, it would probably be better to define availability as a parameter that applies individually to service objectives.

In my opinion we should at least initially stick to the simple case, where availability is defined as a service objective, rather than as a parameter of every service objective - but I am willing to go either way.

--
Eric