Service availability is an extension of high availability that implies a service is always available regardless of hardware, software or user fault. Key principles of service availability: * Redundancy - "backup" capability in case of need to failover due to a fault * Stateful and seamless recovery from failures * Minimization of Mean time to repair (MTTR) - time to restore service after an outage * Fault prediction & avoidance - take action before something fails The traditional definitions of high availability have their roots in hardware systems where redundancy of equipment was the primary mechanism for achieving uptime over a specific period. As software has come to dominate the landscape, the probability of failure is often much higher for applications than it is for hardware and so these concepts have been extended encompass an overall view of Service Availability where downtime, irrespective of its cause, is an exceptionally rare event. Services and applications should always be available, whether it is during abnormal system operation, scheduled maintenance, or software upgrade, for example.
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