Estimating Your Availability Requirements

  • Article

When you build a high availability site, the deployment becomes increasingly expensive as you approach 100 percent availability. You must choose the trade-offs and compromises you are willing to make to fit your budget.

The following table provides a sample framework to help you calculate the benefits of implementing given failure prevention strategies. The numbers used in the table are only a guideline. Use your own data and judgment to create a risk assessment table for your site.

The table describes the usage profile and impact of failure for each Commerce Server feature. Note that the availability targets shown in the table are typical examples. You might choose different availability targets for your site.

Feature Usage profile Failure impacts Availability target (%)
Product Catalog System
  • 100% read-only
  • Large administrative updates
 Shopping not available 99.99
Data Warehouse (OLAP databases and cubes)
  • Fast read/write access required
 Reports not available 99.9
Data Warehouse (import)
  • Read/write very large database
 Data not current 99
Directory Service
  • 99% read only
 Customer authorization not available; shopping by anonymous users only 99.9
Targeting System
  • 100% read-only
  • Administrative updates
 Degraded shopping experience 99
Order Transactions
  • Read/write
  • Highest security and availability requirements
 Shopping not available 99.999
Profiling System
  • 97% read
  • 3% write (modify)
 Customer authorization not available; no personalized content; shopping by anonymous users only 99.9

You can use either SQL Server or Active Directory for authentication on a large site. Both support shopping by anonymous users.

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  • Directory Service includes Active Directory, Site Server 3.0, LDAP Server, or any other third-party LDAP server.

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