Hardware Availability is a function of hardware reliability and the maintainability/serviceability features of that hardware. The principle way of achieving availability goals is to first achieve the reliability goals. This is the most cost-effective way for both the producer and customer to achieve these goals. However, even with the best design and manufacturing practices, random failures will still occur in complex systems. Some of these will result in system outages for a simple non redundant configuration. Service then becomes extremely important in limiting the system downtime to a small period of time. Again, the key to achieving high-availability is to increase the reliability of the system as much as reasonably possible in a cost-effective manner. This requires a two phase …