The term downtime is used to refer to periods when a system is unavailable. The unavailability is the proportion of a time-span that a system is unavailable or offline. This is usually a result of the system failing to function because of an unplanned event, or because of routine maintenance (a planned event). The term is commonly applied to networks and servers. The common reasons for unplanned outages are system failures (such as a crash) or communications failures (commonly known as network outage). The term is also commonly applied in industrial environments in relation to failures in industrial production equipment. Some facilities measure the downtime incurred during a work shift, or during a 12- or 24-hour period. Another common practice is to identify each downtime event as having an operational, electrical or mechanical origin. The opposite of downtime is uptime. Industry standards for the term "Outage Duration" or "Maintenance Duration" can have different point of initiation and completion thus the following clarification should be used to avoid conflicts in contract execution: "Turnkey" this is the most engrossing of all outage types. Outage or Maintenance starts with operator of the plant or equipment pressing the shutdown or stop button to initiate a halt in operation. Unless otherwise noted, Outage or Maintenance is considered completed when the plant or equipment is back in normal operation ready to begin manufacturing or ready be synchronized with system or grid or ready to perform duties as pump or compressor. "Breaker to Breaker" This Outage or Maintenance starts with operator of the plant or equipment removing the power circuit (Main power breaker at "off" or "disengaged" or "On-Cooldown"), not the control circuit from operation. This still would allow for the equipment to be cooled down or brought to ambient such that outage/maintenance work can be prepared or initiated. Depending on equipment types, "Breaker to Breaker" outage can be advantageous if contracting out controls related maintenance as this type of maintenance work can be performed while main equipment is still on cool-down or on stand-by.

About this result
This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.
Related lectures (2)
Related publications (5)

Heading Off Correlated Failures through Independence-as-a-Service

Bryan Alexander Ford, Ennan Zhai

Today's systems pervasively rely on redundancy to ensure reliability. In complex multi-layered hardware/software stacks, however – especially in the clouds where many independent businesses deploy interacting services on common infrastructure – seemingly i ...
2014

Towards Long-Term Collective Experiments

Francesco Mondada, Michael Bonani, Philippe Rétornaz, Florian Christopher Vaussard, Steven Adriaan Roelofsen, François Rey

It is often challenging to manage the battery supply when dealing with a fleet of mobile robots during long experiments. If one uses classical recharge stations, then agents are immobilized during the whole recharge process. In this study, we present a nov ...
Springer Berlin Heidelberg2013
Show more
Related concepts (2)
Service-level agreement
A service-level agreement (SLA) is an agreement between a service provider and a customer. Particular aspects of the service – quality, availability, responsibilities – are agreed between the service provider and the service user. The most common component of an SLA is that the services should be provided to the customer as agreed upon in the contract. As an example, Internet service providers and telcos will commonly include service level agreements within the terms of their contracts with customers to define the level(s) of service being sold in plain language terms.
High availability
High availability (HA) is a characteristic of a system that aims to ensure an agreed level of operational performance, usually uptime, for a higher than normal period. Modernization has resulted in an increased reliance on these systems. For example, hospitals and data centers require high availability of their systems to perform routine daily activities. Availability refers to the ability of the user community to obtain a service or good, access the system, whether to submit new work, update or alter existing work, or collect the results of previous work.

Graph Chatbot

Chat with Graph Search

Ask any question about EPFL courses, lectures, exercises, research, news, etc. or try the example questions below.

DISCLAIMER: The Graph Chatbot is not programmed to provide explicit or categorical answers to your questions. Rather, it transforms your questions into API requests that are distributed across the various IT services officially administered by EPFL. Its purpose is solely to collect and recommend relevant references to content that you can explore to help you answer your questions.