Creating the appropriate Mission Critical (MC) or High Availability (HA) environment to support business requirements can be a difficult task for any enterprise that has not dealt with the complexities of MC in the past. Planning for MC begins with business requirements. Only once those are defined and understood can the data center infrastructure needed to support those requirements be outlined.
Components that must be considered in the planning include:
- Real business requirements for MC applications.
- Server options aligned with business needs.
- Redundant network infrastructure.
- Multi-homed wide area network connections.
- Power and cooling options necessary to support MC.
By leveraging existing IT staff knowledge and data center competencies, MC capabilities can be incorporated without breaking the bank. Understanding the steps and components of MC operations at a high level will make the process easier.