Data Availability

What Does Data Availability Mean?

Data availability is the process of ensuring that data is available to end users and applications, when and where they need it. It defines the degree or extent to which data is readily usable along with the necessary IT and management procedures, tools and technologies required to enable, manage and continue to make data available.

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Techopedia Explains Data Availability

Data availability is primarily used to create service level agreements (SLA) and similar service contracts, which define and guarantee the service provided by third-party IT service providers. Typically, data availability calls for implementing products, services, policies and procedures that ensure that data is available in normal and even in disaster recovery operations. This is usually done by implementing data/storage redundancy, data security, network optimization, data security and more. Storage area networks (SAN), network attached storage and RAID-based storage systems are popular storage management technologies for ensuring data availability.

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Margaret Rouse

Margaret Rouse is an award-winning technical writer and teacher known for her ability to explain complex technical subjects to a non-technical, business audience. Over the past twenty years her explanations have appeared on TechTarget websites and she's been cited as an authority in articles by the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine and Discovery Magazine.Margaret's idea of a fun day is helping IT and business professionals learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages. If you have a suggestion for a new definition or how to improve a technical explanation, please email Margaret or contact her…