Method and system for assessing availability of complex electronic systems, including computer systems

A semi-automated availability-assessment system and methodology. A comprehensive questionnaire providing detailed information about the hardware and operating-system components and configuration of a system, application-and-database-software components and configuration of the system, data related to other potential sources of unplanned downtime, and data related to potential sources of planned downtime is received. The information contained in the received questionnaire is processed in several steps. First, hardware and operating-system-component-and-configuration information is extracted in order to conduct a Markov-chain availability analysis of the overall system hardware and operating system to provide a first intermediate result. Application-and-database-software component and configuration information, along with data and estimates related to software component failure and recovery rates, as well as relevant data for other potential sources of unplanned downtime, are extracted from the questionnaire and compiled together to form a second intermediate result. Information related to maintenance and other planned activities that result in planned system downtime are extracted from the questionnaire and compiled together as a third intermediate result. Finally, the intermediate result sets are combined in a deterministic manner to produce a final availability assessment for the system.