As an increasing number of businesses shift to a virtual environment, network and server outages have become increasingly common. Needless to say, for IT managers and MSPs (Managed Service Providers), technical outages are the bane of the digital world.
Unfortunately, outages are an inevitable part of a business’ environment. As IT specialists, we can work with you minimise the chances of an outage occurring, and to prepare for them and install applications that will help retain critical business information and processes.
Being Prepared is Key
Statistically speaking, the technology, software and services that IT professionals like us install will experience an outage at least once a year. So how do you prepare your IT department and other staff for a network outage that’s almost inevitable?
The most obvious solution here is to resort to comprehensive and robust cloud computing solutions and servers. This will ensure that your workflow and operations experience little to no disruption while you continue working as normal. Cloud-based servers are extremely efficient and at Redpalm we provide integrations with some of the most popular cloud operating systems!
While you can rely on cloud-based servers to ride out network and server outages, there’s room for more preparation to stay a step ahead of the issue.
How to Prevent Server and Network Outages
So, you’ve had an outage! Our network monitoring has brought that to your attention.
What can be done next?
How do you get things up and running again?
Let’s take a look!
Keep an Eye on Server Outages
Leverage network monitoring to understand (and accept) that your business is suffering from downtime. Adopt a proactive approach as you inform your staff about the hold-up in your system. At Redpalm, we have 24/7/365 network monitoring with real-time alerts to ensure that major outage issues are avoided at all costs.
Our state of the art technology and IT expertise identifies network discrepancies before they can start affecting your system meaning, you face little to no downtime.
Deploy Auto Maintenance for All Your Servers
Think of your IT infrastructure, especially all the physical devices and hardware, like a car. Routine maintenance is integral for it to work properly and keep performing at peak efficiency.
Leverage managed IT support to schedule and review all your systems to ensure that all the components are operating at maximum capacity. Maintain your existing hardware and software along with your cloud solutions to weed out issues and loopholes and keep it all up to date and patched to avoid any issues.
Be Proactive During the Initial Stage of the Outage
While everything may not be under your control, some things are and that’s a good starting point to recover from an outage. You could restart your routers and update your DNS settings. If you have backup infrastructure and services, set it up and connect online to see if you bounce back from the downtime. If the outage isn’t internal, contact your hosting provider or cloud server host to ensure that your complain ticket is open and being worked upon. Stay in touch for updates.
As end-to-end IT experts, we could take care of this for you. Give us a call to find out more!
Open Line of Communication with Your Staff
When you face a server outage, it is best to inform all your employees, be honest about it and not hide the fact that there’s a problem. Give your team an estimated time of recovery to ensure that everyone is on the same page. If you try covering it up, things can go sideways. Reassure everyone that you have all hands on deck working on resolving the outage problem.
Communicate with Your Customers and Other Stakeholders
Establish honest, straightforward and workable Service Level Agreements (SLAs) with your customers and keep them in the loop about the expected time for response, remediation and patching up of your system. Create a robust IT plan for times like this so that your customers can count on you for open and transparent communication.
The speed of your response time coupled with proper communication will work in your favour to mitigate the problem at hand and avoid fallout from disgruntled customers.
Contact Redpalm to Ensure Quick Recovery from Internet and Server Outages
As one of the leading IT support companies in the UK, at Redpalm we offer the best technical solutions that will have your network up and running in no time. Our robust IT solutions coupled with our expertise is ideally suited for your bespoke requirements.
Book your free IT consultation with us today to further discuss your IT strategy in detail!
