In this digital world, most businesses are running their operations and process over cloud-based networks. While this offers convenience and efficiency for the entire workforce, networks going down are sometimes unexpected and unavoidable. When this happens, businesses would have to face a wide variety of costly consequences.
Apart from the obvious inconvenience, companies will deal with lost productivity in the workplace, especially if one is solely relying on cloud applications. There will also be a loss of services, making it impossible to drive online sales. The worst part? It can lead to data loss that can potentially damage a company’s reputation.
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Check the SLAs of your partners
Most of the time, businesses carelessly purchase an IT product with service level agreements (SLAs) that don’t actually suit their level of operations and processes. So, before anything else, make sure to look into your key partners’ and vendors’ SLAs. It’s best to explore alternatives if the agreed level of availability does not suit your needs.
To achieve a downtime maximum of five minutes, your SLAs should be on ‘five nines’ or 99.999% availability. If you’re using tech with low SLAs, you may suffer from a longer, more costly downtime. Always check the SLAs for future vendors before signing a contract.
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Use active-active clustering environments
One of the most common ways to minimize server downtime is using active-active cluster architectures. This can help reduce server overloads by balancing the loads across different networks. It’s also considered a more reliable option for organizations as it helps lowers risk and encourages more efficiency. There are also active-passive clusters that some businesses used, but this tends to be a more costly approach and less secure. In fact, previous users claim that they lost more crucial communications and data from using an active-passive cluster architecture.
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Evaluate current systems
Your company’s data collection systems are critical for your overall production, which is why it only makes sense to check them regularly. Ideally, you should pinpoint the major causes of downtime. Have real-time access to your operational data so you can better assess what machines and systems go down. From then, you can come up with appropriate responses.
Your IT department should regularly monitor your IT infrastructure’s health and perform system audits. Doing so cannot only minimize downtime but also guarantee your core system’s uptime, identify security vulnerabilities, and regularly maintain and patch IT systems. It can also standardize your procedures and processes, as well as eliminate redundancies. Don’t forget to create detailed documentation.
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Acquire professional support
Sometimes having an in-house IT department isn’t enough to guarantee the smooth operation of servers. This is where acquiring the support of experienced technicians or IT specialists is recommended. You can now easily find ones that offer professional support for SQL servers, helping you maintain good performance, security, and availability of your database systems.
Others provide services covering system upgrades, replacement, repairs, integration, and programming for different systems or servers. By obtaining such services can help you maintain healthy systems and even implement prevention programs for downtimes.
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Train your team members
Having cutting-edge technology and outside professional IT support would be useless if your team is clueless about the entire operations. To minimize the risks of future downtime, train the users how to prevent and handle both software and hardware errors. You can create specialized training for your employees and teach them everything they need to know, from the impact of their actions to the importance of up-to-date documentation.
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Create a foolproof maintenance strategy
Lastly, make sure you have a planned maintenance strategy setup for potential downtimes. Ideally, it should contain recommendations on properly handling maintenance problems and, most importantly, a suitable maintenance guidelines framework. You should also include systems control documentation, as well as design and schedule for the maintenance organization.
To make sure you have a good maintenance strategy, there are a few things you need to do. First, completely cut or reduce traffic between servers, eliminate redundant servers, upgrade your servers, and perform regular checks to assess what systems are functioning well and which ones are not. Close checks and evaluations should be prioritized to accurately determine the causes of the previous downtime and create better solutions for future breakdowns.
Server or system downtime should be taken seriously by employing stronger cybersecurity, protecting your data from getting lost or hacked. Avoid losing thousands of dollars of sales due to downtime by taking these tips into account!
