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This document summarizes an article from the DITY newsletter about how a university improved network availability through focused application of ITIL availability management techniques. The university was experiencing weekly outages on circuits provided by their telecom provider. By monitoring interface utilization and documenting outages, the university was able to claim credits from the provider as outlined in their contract. This drove the provider to finally resolve the underlying issues causing the chronic outages. The article concludes that even without a full ITIL program, organizations can achieve practical benefits by taking a pragmatic, results-oriented approach based on ITIL concepts.
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- 1. itSM Solutions® DITY™ Newsletter Reprint This is a reprint of an itSM Solutions® DITY™ Newsletter. Our members receive our weekly DITY Newsletter, and have access to practical and often entertaining articles in our archives. DITY is the newsletter for IT professionals who want a workable, practical guide to implementing ITIL best practices -- without the hype. become a member (It's Free. Visit http://www.itsmsolutions.com/newsletters/DITY.htm) Publisher itSM Solutions™ LLC 31 South Talbert Blvd #295 Lexington, NC 27292 Phone (336) 510-2885 Fax (336) 798-6296 Find us on the web at: http://www.itsmsolutions.com. To report errors please send a note to the editor, Hank Marquis at hank.marquis@itsmsolutions.com For information on obtaining copies of this guide contact: sales@itsmsolutions.com Copyright © 2006 Nichols-Kuhn Group. ITIL Glossaries © Crown Copyright Office of Government Commerce. Reproduced with the permission of the Controller of HMSO and the Office of Government Commerce. Notice of Rights / Restricted Rights Legend All rights reserved. Reproduction or transmittal of this guide or any portion thereof by any means whatsoever without prior written permission of the Publisher is prohibited. All itSM Solutions products are licensed in accordance with the terms and conditions of the itSM Solutions Partner License. No title or ownership of this guide, any portion thereof, or its contents is transferred, and any use of the guide or any portion thereof beyond the terms of the previously mentioned license, without written authorization of the Publisher, is prohibited. Notice of Liability This guide is distributed "As Is," without warranty of any kind, either express or implied, respecting the content of this guide, including but not limited to implied warranties for the guide's quality, performance, merchantability, or fitness for any particular purpose. Neither the authors, nor itSM Solutions LLC, its dealers or distributors shall be liable with respect to any liability, loss or damage caused or alleged to have been caused directly or indirectly by the contents of this guide. Trademarks itSM Solutions is a trademark of itSM Solutions LLC. Do IT Yourself™ and DITY™ are trademarks of Nichols-Kuhn Group. ITIL ® is a Registered Trade Mark, and a Registered Community Trade Mark of the Office of Government Commerce, and is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, and is used here by itSM Solutions LLC under license from and with the permission of OGC (Trade Mark License No. 0002). IT Infrastructure Library ® is a Registered Trade Mark of the Office of Government Commerce and is used here by itSM Solutions LLC under license from and with the permission of OGC (Trade Mark License No. 0002). Other product names mentioned in this guide may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies.
- 2. Availability Management in Action Instructor Portal Downloads Newsletters --------------------------------------------- DITY™ Newsletter Vol. 3.6 • February 7, 2007 Availability Management in Action digg (discuss or comment) on this article. Show your support for DITY! Subscribe Its Free! RSS Stay up to date! Print page PDF Pass it around! Availability Management intimidates many new practitioners, and they often leave it to last or skip it altogether. This is too bad, because even without a formal ITIL program, Availability Management can yield dramatic results, as one of my clients, a major University, found out... By Hank Marquis Lots of people get intimidated by the math and scope of Availability Management. It is too bad, because you can get quite a few quick wins by applying some simple Availability Management techniques. I am going to illustrate this by describing the story of a University that I worked with. They used Availability Management to take back control of their infrastructure. The University had issues of availability with one of their underpinning contracts (UC) with a telecom provider. They kept losing service. They would open an incident, which would invariably close as “no trouble found” or “came clear while testing” in a few days. They were simply not able to get the attention of the service provider. Then they became aware of availability management, took some action, and not only got their file:///C|/Documents and Settings/hmarquis/My Documents/My Webs/itSM Solutions(v2)/newsletters/DITYvol3iss6.htm (1 of 3)2/1/2007 11:12:18 AM
- 3. Availability Management in Action issues resolved, but got some cash back in the process. Once again, actually getting benefits from ITIL “ain't sexy” but “it sure is valuable.” Based on my personal experience, following I describe how a major University was able to improve quality and reduce costs through focused application of the basic ITIL concept of Availability Management. The Issue The University, which shall remain nameless, was having issues with a carrier. The IT department at the University supported several distributed campuses, all connected by wide area network (WAN) circuits from the regional carrier (who shall also remain nameless to protect the guilty!) About every week a WAN circuit would fail and either disconnect the campus, or cause significant delays on other circuits due to saturation as the traffic re-routed. The result was significant negative impact on the campus, professors, researchers, administrators, and students. Not a pretty picture. Whenever this happened, University IT would open a ticket with the carrier. After a couple of days the circuit would “miraculously” recover, and the incident would close. A follow-up with the carrier invariably yielded that classic telco response: “we didn't do anything, but does it work now?” and the ticket would be closed as NTF (No Trouble Found) or CWT (Came Clear While Testing). Let me translate here. In other words, the telco had an intermittent problem that they could not find, and when the fiddled around with enough things the systems would recover on their own. Since the telco never got to the root cause, the underlying root cause of the incidents remained. This is the classic “chronic” incident and problem. The Solution My customer, director of the University IT organization decided to take action. He obtained a copy of the UC with the telco, which he read very carefully. As do most UCs there was small print mentioning that any degradation in availability greater than a set amount would authorize the University for a refund to be applied to the next months bill. Of course, the issue was how to document these outages in a manner acceptable to the telco. He decided to collect WAN interface utilization metrics from the routers connected to the problem circuits. He gathered them regularly and created a database of information. This was what ITIL would describe as an Availability Management Database (AMDB). Over time he gathered enough outage information with enough granularity to be able to see exactly (too within a few seconds) when the circuit went down, and when it came back up. He did would open a ticket as required in the UC, but he monitored the circuit himself. He then produced a report showing all the outages in the month, which he associated with telco trouble tickets reference numbers. Finally, he created an invoice, and sent the telco a bill, asking that the amount due the University be applied to his next months bill. The Results As you might expect, the telco was not happy with his bill. After all, telcos bill users, not the other file:///C|/Documents and Settings/hmarquis/My Documents/My Webs/itSM Solutions(v2)/newsletters/DITYvol3iss6.htm (2 of 3)2/1/2007 11:12:18 AM
- 4. Availability Management in Action way round. It didn't take long (just a few months) for the telco to decide they had to resolve this issue once and for all, and that is exactly what they did. And until it was resolved, the University indeed got credits off their bill. When the telco, now driven to identify the root cause, actually resolved the issue, the quality of service to the many campuses greatly improved. All users were much happier, as was my client. The Moral The solution to this real life clients problems was not sexy, but it was valuable. And yes, they could have done all this without the ITIL. I agree that this was “simple common sense” -- but isn't that all the ITIL really presents? The difference is between knowing and doing. The ITIL presents what you should do, and offers many angles to appreciate the job at hand. However, ITIL does nothing. It is how you, the practitioner applies the techniques described in the ITIL that matters. Having an Availability Management Database (AMDB) or even a CMDB is not the goal. In this example, the benefit came from using the ITIL model as a reference to understand and talk about the issue, and then creating an AMDB with the express purpose of solving a problem. This is the sort of focused, pragmatic and results oriented approach any organization can take, even without a formal ITIL program. So don't get caught up in all the hype, and don't get intimidated. You can do it yourself! Subscribe Its Free! RSS Stay up to date! PDF Pass it around! Where to go from here: q q q q digg (discuss or comment) on this article. Show your support for DITY! Subscribe to our newsletter and get new skills delivered right to your Inbox, click here. Download this article in PDF format for use at your own convenience, click here. Use your favorite RSS reader to stay up to date, click here. Related articles: q Browse back-issues of the DITY Newsletter, click here. Home Methodology About Us Products Contact Us file:///C|/Documents and Settings/hmarquis/My Documents/My Webs/itSM Solutions(v2)/newsletters/DITYvol3iss6.htm (3 of 3)2/1/2007 11:12:18 AM