What type of outage does an availability event report?

An availability event specifically reports a significant disruption in service, typically characterized by a severe component outage. This type of event highlights when a critical part of the system becomes unavailable, leading to potential downtime for users and applications dependent on those components. Availability events are essential for understanding the health of the system since they indicate when services are not functioning as expected, which directly impacts user experience and operational efficiency.

In the context of monitoring and managing IT operations, recognizing severe outages is crucial, as it allows teams to respond quickly to restore services and mitigate impact. This is distinct from other situations like minor degradations in service, which may not result in complete unavailability, or issues like increased resource utilization, which may affect performance but do not constitute an outright failure of service. Email notification failures, while relevant, do not represent an outage of the monitored application or service itself but rather a communication issue regarding alerts. Thus, the primary focus of availability events is on those severe outages that warrant immediate attention and resolution.