Availability Guide for Problem Management

Recovering From Unplanned Outages
Availability Guide for Problem Management–125509
3-11
Gathering the Facts
Maintaining an Outage Log
Use an outage log to record the event or problem that caused the outage, the time the
outage occurred, what action was taken, and when the outage was “closed” or resolved.
Outage logs provide a useful tool for tracking outages. For example, they provide an
accurate assessment of system availability and can be used for trend analysis, to set and
maintain service-level objectives, and to identify improvement areas. Improvements
could include increased operator training, improved change management procedures,
new operational tools and utilities, or additional system software or hardware. An outage
log can be either online or in hard-copy format.
Figure 3-3 illustrates a sample outage log, generally used by either operators or help-
desk personnel to record and track outages discovered by operators or called in by users.