Architecting
highly availability systems is not new. They are, in fact, commonplace
in industries such as financial. However, many recent events have
heightened interests and requirements in availability:
- Catastrophic events such as September 11, 2001
or the Northeast Power Blackout of 2003 have pushed availability to
the foreground. Situations that were unimaginable five years ago are
now a serious part of business continuity planning. In fact, many
corporate managers reject business continuity plans that do not incorporate
wide scale disasters.
- Emerging regulations are forcing availability.
In the health care industry, the Health Insurance Portability and
Accountability Act (HIPAA) mandates business continuity and availability
planning. Section 404 of Sarbanes-Oxley specifies that corporations
must protect the systems used to report financial information. At
a minimum, corporations are forced to think about the ability to recover
those systems.
- Your corporation
may be part of a supply chain where inventory needs to be available
just-in-time. You may demand or are demanded by your partners to have
your systems available to ensure that business partners can communicate.
In some situations, trading partners may demand business continuity
plans or disaster recovery plans ensuring that services can be restored
within a set period of time after catastrophes.