Key Concepts in IT Infrastructure and Security

Availability

• Definition: Ensuring that systems and resources are operational and accessible to authorized users.
• Importance: High priority in IT, often measured as uptime percentage (e.g., 99.999%).
• Challenges: Downtime occurs, and recovery speed is crucial but hard to predict due to root cause analysis.

Resilience and MTTR (Mean Time to Repair)

• Resilience: Systems' ability to recover from downtime.
• MTTR: Average time to replace failed components with operational ones.

Cost Considerations

• Factors: Installation, maintenance, replacement costs, depreciation, operational expenses, and tax implications.

Responsiveness

• Definition: Speed of response from a service or application.
• Factors: Varies with transaction steps and application components.
• Elasticity: Ability to scale application based on demand, balancing cost and performance.

Application Infrastructure

• Components: Web server, database server, caching server, firewall, etc.
• Deployment Considerations: Technical infrastructure, hardware resources, budgets, and change control.
• Cloud-based Advantages: Automated orchestration for rapid deployment.

Risk Management and Insurance

• Cybersecurity Insurance: Transfers financial risk, covers losses from ransomware, outages, legal costs.

Recovery and Efficiency

• Planning: Efficient recovery processes can save time and money.
• Examples: Malware recovery via system imaging is faster and cheaper than OS reinstallation.

Patching and Security

• Importance: Regular updates and patches prevent exploits.
• Challenges: Some systems lack patch processes.
• Security Measures: Additional security layers, like firewalls, to protect vulnerable systems.

Power Infrastructure

• Criticality: Essential for both on-premises and cloud systems.
• Management: Licensed electrician assessment, backup solutions (UPS, generators).

Cloud Resources and Compute Engines

• Compute Component: Provides data processing capabilities.
• Scalability: Use of cloud-based technologies for scalable computing needs.