How do you measure Exchange Server availability? For the most
effective evaluation, you might want to reconsider your
approach.  Editor's Note: Because of next week's US Independence
Day holiday, the next issue of Exchange and Outlook UPDATE,
Exchange Edition, will be on July 12, 2002.  How do you measure
reliability in your Exchange Server environment? You can use a
standard military specification that factors failure rates and
the mean time between failures (MTBF) into the total operational
period. However, reliability measurements are best suited to
individual physical system components. Do these values really
mean anything to you as an Exchange administrator?  I prefer to
think about availability rather than reliability. However, most
Exchange administrators look at availability from a binary point
of view (i.e., is your Exchange server up or down?) or as a
measurement of the percentage of time a system is available for
a given operational period (e.g., 99.999 percent). These views
might not be the most e