issues . please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page . learn how and when to remove these template messages the topic of this article may not meet wikipedia s notability guidelines for companies and organizations . please help to establish notability by citing reliable secondary sources that are independent of the topic and provide significant coverage of it beyond its mere trivial mention . if notability can not be established the article is likely to be merged redirected or deleted . find sources service availability forum news newspapers books scholar jstor free images june 2012 learn how and when to remove this template message this article needs additional citations for verification . please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources . unsourced material may be challenged and removed . october 2011 learn how and when to remove this template message this article relies too much on references to primary sources . please improve this by adding secondary or tertiary sources . june 2012 learn how and when to remove this template message learn how and when to remove this template message sa forum redirects here . it can also refer to the something awful forums . service availability forum type private 501 c 6 industry technology founded 2001 headquarters beaverton oregon usa website http www.saforum.org the service availability forum saf or sa forum is a consortium that develops publishes educates on and promotes open specifications for carrier grade and mission critical systems . formed in 2001 it promotes development and deployment of commercial off the shelf cots technology . contents 1 description 1.1 specifications 1.2 educational resources 2 see also 3 references 4 external links description edit service availability is an extension of high availability referring to services that are available regardless of hardware software or user fault and importance . key principles of service availability redundancy backup capability in case of need to failover due to a fault stateful and seamless recovery from failures minimization of mean time to repair mttr time to restore service after an outage fault prediction & avoidance take action before something fails the traditional definitions of high availability have their roots in hardware systems where redundancy of equipment was the primary mechanism for achieving uptime over a specific period . as software has come to dominate the landscape the probability of failure is often much higher for applications than it is for hardware and so these concepts have been extended encompass an overall view of service availability where downtime irrespective of its cause is an exceptionally rare event . services and applications should always be available whether it is during abnormal system operation scheduled maintenance or software upgrade for example . citation needed cots ecosystem diagram sa forum support commercial off the shelf cots technology for uninterrupted service availability application portability and seamless integration . collaborating industry organizations include the following citation needed cp ta communications platforms trade association ensure interoperability on xtca platforms . citation needed picmg pci industrial computer manufacturers group develop open specifications that adapt pci technology for use in high performance telecommunications and industrial computing applications . citation needed scope alliance enable and promote the availability of open carrier grade base platforms based on cots hardware software and free and open source software foss building blocks and to promote interoperability between such components . citation needed the linux foundation promote protect and standardize linux by providing unified resources and services needed for open source to successfully compete with closed platforms . citation needed specifications edit sa forum enabled cots platform specifications for carrier grade service availability include hardware platform interface hpi application interface specification ais mapping specifications 1 java mapping specifications hpi to advancedtca mapping specifications educational resources edit the sa forum s walter s moments cartoon series helps explain the benefits of service availability to a wider audience . the sa forum free educational materials enable self guided training the sa forum specifications application webcasts 2 tutorials 3 whitepapers 4 see also edit high availability commercial off the shelf advanced telecommunications computing architecture atca communications platforms trade association picmg scope alliance safplus the linux foundation opensaf hardware platform interface application interface specification references edit mapping specifications . saforum.org . 2011 . retrieved october 4 2011 . application webcast series . saforum.org . 2011 . retrieved october 4 2011 . specification tutorials . saforum.org . 2011 . retrieved october 4 2011 . featured whitepaper the software management framework . saforum.org . 2011 . retrieved october 4 2011 . external links edit official website retrieved from https en.wikipedia.org w index.php title service availability forum & oldid 715463542 categories technology consortiahidden categories articles with topics of unclear notability from june 2012all articles with topics of unclear notabilityarticles needing additional references from october 2011all articles needing additional referencesarticles lacking reliable references from june 2012all articles lacking reliable referencesall articles with unsourced statementsarticles with unsourced statements from october 2011 navigation menu personal tools not logged intalkcontributionscreate accountlog in namespaces article talk variants views read edit view history more search navigation main pagecontentsfeatured contentcurrent eventsrandom articledonate to wikipediawikipedia store interaction helpabout wikipediacommunity portalrecent 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