3. Mission-Critical EnvironmentsMission-critical is a commonly abused term. Some think it describes any architecture that they run; others believe it is a term for "systems that launch spacecraft." For the purpose of further discussion, we will equate mission-critical systems with business-critical systems. Business-critical is easy to define: Each business can simply choose what it believes to be vital to its operations. Perhaps the most important issue to address from a technical perspective is to determine what aspects of a technical infrastructure are critical to the mission. Note the word is aspects and not components. This isn't solely about equipment and software; it is also about policies and procedures. Without going into painful detail, we will touch on five key aspects of mission-critical environments:
To effectively manage and maintain any sizable mission-critical environment, these aspects must be mastered. Mission-critical architectures are typically managed by either a few focused teams or a few multidisciplinary teams. I prefer the latter because knowledge and standards tend to be contagious, and all five aspects are easy to master when aggregating the expertise of all individuals on a multidisciplinary team. Although it is not essential that every participant be an expert in any or all of these areas, it is essential that they be wholly competent in at least one area and always cognizant of the others. Being mindful of the overall architecture is important. As an application developer, if you habitually ignore the monitoring systems, you are likely to make invalid assumptions resulting in decisions that negatively impact the business. |