Your Enterprise’s First Steps to Combat System Downtime

System downtimes are a fact of life for all enterprises that use digital tools. Not only is downtime an inconvenience, but even short downtimes can also harm your business. For example, every second a company’s software system is down, sales and revenue are lost. It is, therefore, critical that system downtime is kept to an absolute minimum. As a result, many businesses ask how to maintain high levels of system uptime.

IT infrastructure monitoring tools are essential to ensure your software can cope effectively with its demands. Infrastructure monitoring helps admins see live information about the deployed software tools, allowing them to identify any issues that could lead to unexpected downtime.

By collecting performance and operational data, IT admins can diagnose and repair any issues. In addition, infrastructure monitoring tools can help system admins prevent similar problems from occurring in the future.

There are several ways IT admins can monitor a system to collect data and assess its performance: These can include databases, virtual machines, network infrastructure, IoT devices, and other backend components.

So, why is infrastructure monitoring so important?

Just like any digital device, computer systems don’t last forever. Whilst there are many ways you can prevent system failure and downtime, some level of system failure is inevitable. This could be due to overuse and general wear and tear with time or your computer no longer being powerful enough to handle the new software.

Therefore, your equipment must be constantly monitored so that any failures can be dealt with swiftly and with minimal damage to your software and little disruption to your business. But what happens if your software is not monitored and your system fails? Again, there are practical steps you can take.

Identify the cause

Several factors can cause system downtime. Identifying what is causing your device to shut down is an excellent first step in dealing with the problem. Common causes of system downtime include power grid and network outages, criminal activity such as cyber-attacks or data breaches, resource overloads (especially common in large organisations where the servers might struggle with multiple users), hardware failures, human errors, and many more.

Your team should be able to diagnose whatever issue is causing your system outage relatively quickly. It is always a good idea to ensure you have a diagnostic manual hardcopy on hand, especially if you don’t have an IT professional team available on standby.

Document everything

One of the first steps you should take in the event of a system outage is to record everything. Gathering this information will help you troubleshoot and repair system failures as quickly as possible.

Make sure you document anything that occurred just before the system failed, what happened during the outage, and anything that might be relevant afterwards. Consider potential warning signs that might have happened hours, days, or even weeks beforehand, which you might have dismissed as minor glitches. These could be incidents such as the device slightly slowing down, weak connections, unexplained alert sounds, or new pop-ups randomly appearing – anything that could indicate what might have caused the system downtime.

Also, document exactly what the diagnosis was and how it was resolved. Not only will this help you and your IT team to identify the problem quicker, but it will also help you to spot the potential warning signs of a system failure in the future and remind you how to deal with it.

Notify the relevant people

The first people you should notify as soon as your software goes into downtime are your server administrators and, if you have one, your IT team. You must remain calm and communicate the urgency of your system outage. For instance, if there is any chance that important data could be lost, you must inform the relevant teams. Fortunately, most hosting companies have backups for at least a few hours, so you should have recourse.

While dealing with a software outage, it can be easy to become hyper-focused on the problem and forget about clients or anyone who relies on your system. While you should prioritise diagnosing and fixing the issue, you should also remember to make customers and stakeholders aware. Be prepared for many phone calls while trying to troubleshoot your system downtime. If possible, delegate the task of informing clients and stakeholders to another team member while you focus on diagnosing and repairing your system.

Conclusion

System downtimes can be costly, so it’s important to be prepared if it happens to you. The first steps in handling system downtime should be attempting to identify the cause of the outage, documenting everything, and notifying the relevant people.