Management Framework and Solution Availability
Think of the availability of an interaction management solution as the amount of time that the solution is available to process enterprise interactions. Two major categories of events affect availability: changes in the operating conditions and failures. The first category combines the various operational and maintenance activities that require temporary shutdown and restart of the entire system or of one of its components. The second category deals with the temporary inability of the solution to perform its required functions because of operator errors or software faults.
Given the complexity of the solution architecture, remember that:
- Any interaction management solution relies on functionality provided by a number of components, each performing a specific task. The overall availability of a solution depends on the availability of each of the components involved.
- Interaction management solutions do not operate in isolation. On the contrary, they essentially bring together various business resources, such as telephony switches, call-processing telephony terminations, database management systems, and Internet communication servers. As such, the inability of an interaction management solution to perform its required function may be the result of the unavailability of an external component or system.
- Genesys solutions, which consist of software components only, operate on hardware platforms that require maintenance and that are subject to failures. For example, running redundant processes on the same host may work in the presence of a software failure; however, it offers no protection if the computer itself or a communication link to it fails. The availability of a solution can never be greater than the availability of the underlying hardware platform.
The Genesys Framework is designed to minimize the impact on solution availability associated with operational and maintenance activities. Because the Configuration Layer updates solutions about any configuration changes at runtime, uninterrupted solution operations are guaranteed regardless of the number or frequency of changes made to the contact center environment. Dynamic reconfiguration is a standard feature of every Genesys 7.x and 8.x component and does not require you to make any special adjustments to enable configuration settings.
Solution availability can also be affected by accidental operator errors, unauthorized actions, or actions that are carried out in a less than skillful manner. The data integrity rules implemented in the Configuration Layer greatly reduce errors of the first type. The basic integrity rules common across all solutions are supported by Configuration Server, and therefore enforced regardless of the type of client application through which the data is managed. More advanced integrity rules specific to a particular solution are implemented in the solution wizards. Genesys recommends that you use wizards for the initial deployment of solutions and major configuration updates in the course of solution operation.
Solution availability can also be impacted by the occurrence of a disaster, natural of man-made, that causes an entire site to go down. See Disaster Recovery/Business Continuity for a new Disaster Recovery architecture to prevent permanent failure of Management Framework itself because of the loss of the entire site.
Genesys Framework also provides a comprehensive set of access control functions that help minimize the risk of failures associated with unskilled or unauthorized operator actions. For more information about these functions, see Security Considerations.
Finally, to reduce the impact on solution operations, schedule all operational and maintenance activities that directly affect system behavior for off-peak hours, when solutions operate at minimum loads.
Faults-accidental and unplanned events causing a system to fail-present the biggest challenge to solution availability. The functions that detect, isolate, and correct various types of faults are partly incorporated into every Genesys component and partly implemented in the Management Layer of the Genesys Framework. Refer to the ''Framework 8.5 Management Layer User's Guide'' for more information about the various fault-detection mechanisms implemented in Genesys software.