EXAM - Availability Management

Availability Management is responsible for availability of the:

A. Services and Components

B. Services and Business Processes

C. Components and Business Processes

D. Services, Components and Business Processes

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Answer: A

Availability Management is the practice of identifying levels of IT Service availability for use in Service Level Reviews with Customers.
All areas of a service must be measurable and defined within the Service Level Agreement (SLA).
To measure service availability the following areas are usually included in the SLA:

• Agreement statistics – such as what is included within the agreed service.
• Availability – agreed service times, response times, etc.
• Help Desk Calls – number of incidents raised, response times, resolution times.
• Contingency – agreed contingency details, location of documentation, contingency site, 3^rd party involvement, etc.
• Capacity – performance timings for online transactions, report production, numbers of users, etc.
• Costing Details – charges for the service, and any penalties should service levels not be met.

Availability is usually calculated based on a model involving the Availability Ratio and techniques such as Fault Tree Analysis, and includes the following elements:

• Serviceability – where a service is provided by a 3^rd party organisation, this is the expected availability of a component.
• Reliability – the time for which a component can be expected to perform under specific conditions without failure.
• Recoverability – the time it should take to restore a component back to its operational state after a failure.
• Maintainability – the ease with which a component can be maintained, which can be both remedial or preventative.
• Resilience – the ability to withstand failure.
• Security – the ability of components to withstand breaches of security.

EXAM - Data and capacity management process

Data used to support the capacity management process should be stored in:A. A configuration management database (CMDB)
B. A capacity database (CDB)
C. A configuration management system (CMS)
D. A capacity management information system (CMIS)
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Answer: D

Capacity Management is a process used to manage information technology (IT). Its primary goal is to ensure that IT capacity meets current and future business requirements in a cost-effective manner. One common interpretation of Capacity Management is described in the ITIL framework. ITIL version 3 views capacity management as comprising three sub-processes: business capacity management, service capacity management, and component capacity management (known as resource capacity management in ITIL version 2).
As the usage of IT Services change and functionality evolves, the amount of processing power, memory etc also changes. If it is possible to understand the demands being made currently, and how they will change over time, this approach proposes that planning for IT Service growth becomes easier and less reactive. If there are spikes in, for example, processing power at a particular time of the day, it proposes analyzing what is happening at that time and make changes to maximize the existing infrastructure, for example, tune the application, or move a batch cycle to a quieter period.
These activities are intended to optimize performance and efficiency, and to plan for and justify financial investments. Capacity management is concerned with:

• Monitoring the performance and throughput or load on a server, server farm, or property
• Performance analysis of measurement data, including analysis of the impact of new releases on capacity
• Performance tuning of activities to ensure the most efficient use of existing infrastructure
• Understanding the demands on the Service and future plans for workload growth (or shrinkage)
• Influences on demand for computing resources
• Capacity planning – developing a plan for the Service

Capacity management interacts with the discipline of Performance Engineering, both during the requirements and design activities of building a system, and when using performance monitoring as an input for managing capacity of deployed systems.

EXAM - Identity and Rights

Identity and Rights are two major concepts involved in which one of the following processes?

A. Access Management

B. Facilities Management

C. Event Management

D. Demand Management

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Answer: A

Access management is the process which grants authorized users the rights to utilize the services and at the same time prevents unauthorized access. This process is also known as identity and access management (IAM). Access management therefore deals with the following topics:

• Access, in other words access and entry to services, data and facilities.
• Identity, i.e. the identity of the user or technical device which requires the access. The identity must be clearly assignable to the actual person and device. Certificates are often used to ensure this is the case.
• Rights, these are the rights or privileges which the user can exercise. Typical rights are read, write, execute, change or delete.
• Services or service groups, these are roles that the users perform for their activities. The rights are normally assigned to these roles. The user can take on a number of roles and automatically inherits their rights on assignment to this group. This simplifies the administration and overview of the distributed rights and increases their transparency.
• Directory service, describes a specific tool which can be used for the administration of identities, rights and roles.

Access management is in effect the execution of availability and information security management in such a way that the process enables the organization to guarantee the confidentiality, availability and integrity of the services and corporate data. As such, for example, access management ensures that a user is granted the rights in order to utilize the service. However, it is the task of availability management to ensure that this access is also always available within the agreed period. Access management is normally initiated with a service request by the service desk.

EXAM - Workaround documentation

Where should details of a Workaround always be documented?

A. The Service Level Agreement (SLA)

B. The Problem Record

C. The Availability Management Information System

D. The IT Service Continuity Plan

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Answer: B

Workaround is defined as method of avoiding an Incident or Problem, either by employing a temporary fix or technique that means a Customer is not reliant on a Configuration Item (CI) that is known to cause failure. 

By definition, workarounds are ALWAYS documented in the problem record.

EXAM - Problem Management objectives

Which of the following is NOT a valid objective of Problem Management?

A. To prevent Problems and their resultant Incidents

B. To manage Problems throughout their lifecycle

C. To restore service to a user

D. To eliminate recurring Incidents

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Answer: C

Problem management aims to resolve the root causes of incidents and thus to minimise the adverse impact of incidents and problems on business that are caused by errors within the IT infrastructure, and to prevent recurrence of incidents related to these errors. A 'problem' is an unknown underlying cause of one or more incidents, and a 'known error' is a problem that is successfully diagnosed and for which either a work-around or a permanent resolution has been identified. The CCTA (Central Computer and Telecommunications Agency) defines problems and known errors as follows

A problem is a condition often identified as a result of multiple incidents that exhibit common symptoms. Problems can also be identified from a single significant incident, indicative of a single error, for which the cause is unknown, but for which the impact is significant.

A known error is a condition identified by successful diagnosis of the root cause of a problem, and the subsequent development of a work-around.

Problem management differs from incident management. The principal purpose of problem management is to find and resolve the root cause of a problem and thus prevent further incidents; the purpose of incident management is to return the service to normal level as soon as possible, with smallest possible business impact.
The problem-management process is intended to reduce the number and severity of incidents and problems on the business, and report it in documentation to be available for the first-line and second line of the help desk. The proactive process identifies and resolves problems before incidents occur. Such processes include:

• Trend analysis;
• Targeting support action;
• Providing information to the organisation

The error control process iteratively diagnoses known errors until they are eliminated by the successful implementation of a change under the control of the Change Management process.
The problem control process aims to handle problems in an efficient way. Problem control identifies the root cause of incidents and reports it to the service desk. Other activities are:

• Problem identification and recording
• Problem classification
• Problem investigation and diagnosis

A technique for identifying the root cause of a problem is to use an Ishikawa diagram, also referred to as a cause-and-effect diagram, tree diagram, or fishbone diagram. Alternatively, a formal Root Cause Analysis method such as Apollo Root Cause Analysis can be implemented and used to identify causes and solutions. An effective root cause analysis method and/or tool will provide the most effective/efficient solutions to address problems in the Problem Management process.

EXAM - Continual Service Improvement (CSI) Model

What would be the next step in the Continual Service Improvement (CSI) Model after:

1. What is the vision?
2. Where are we now?
3. Where do we want to be?
4. How do we get there?
5. Did we get there?
6. ?

A. What is the Return On Investment (ROI)?
B. How much did it cost?
C. How do we keep the momentum going?
D. What is the Value On Investment (VOI)?


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Answer: C

There are 6 Steps Involved in CSI: 

Step # 1: What is the vision:
As an organization, the vision tells you where you would like to be. This includes all business missions, goals and objectives. The IT strategies should be in line with the vision of the business and if not, a change should be introduced.

Step # 2: Where are we now:
The second step is to assess the current situation of the business. Without realizing the current position of the business pertaining to its assets, organizations cannot make the appropriate decisions to move ahead.

Step # 3: Where do we want to be:
The third step is to understand the improvements that are required within an organization and agree to them. In this step, an organization needs to determine and focus on its measurable targets.

Step # 4: How do we get there:
The fourth step is to create a detailed CSI plan that provides explanations of the various improvements that are to be made to the business environment.

Step #5: Did we get there:
 The fifth step is to verify whether the measurements and metrics are in place or not. These help in confirming whether the goals of a business organization have been successfully met.

Step # 6: How do we keep the momentum going:
The sixth step of the CSI Model is to ensure that there has been an improvement in quality. The CSI Model works in a loop so after this step, the cycle begins again.

EXAM - Operational level agreement (OLA)

What is the BEST description of an Operational Level Agreement (OLA)?

A. An agreement between the service provider and another part of the same organization

B. An agreement between the service provider and an external organization

C. A document that describes to a customer how services will be operated on a day-to-day basis

D. A document that describes business services to operational staff

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Answer: A

An operational-level agreement (OLA) defines the interdependent relationships among the internal support groups of an organization working to support a service-level agreement (SLA). The agreement describes the responsibilities of each internal support group toward other support groups, including the process and timeframe for delivery of their services. The objective of the OLA is to present a clear, concise and measurable description of the service provider's internal support relationships.

OLA is sometimes expanded to other phrases but they all have the same meaning:

• organizational-level agreement
• operating-level agreement
• operations-level agreement