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What To Do During a Network & Server Outage

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24 November 2020

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, server outages are an inevitable part of a business environment. As IT specialists, we can work with you to minimise the chances of an outage occurring and help prepare for them. By installing key applications, we can help you retain critical business information and processes. 

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 an almost inevitable network outage?

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.

While you can rely on cloud-based servers to ride out network and server outages, there’s still room for more preparation to stay ahead of the issue. 

In this article, we will explore how to effectively respond to a network and server outage until your servers are up and running once again.

Let’s take a look!

1) Keep an Eye on Server Outages

Leverage network monitoring to perform a server status check and understand when your business is suffering from downtime. Once you’ve identified a server outage, 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. As such, our state-of-the-art technology and IT expertise can identify network discrepancies before they can start affecting your system. Thus enabling you to face little to no server downtime.

2) 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. 

Moreover, maintain your existing hardware and software along with your cloud solutions to weed out issues and loopholes. You also want to keep it all up to date and patched to avoid any issues. 

3) 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 a server 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 server downtime. If the outage isn’t internal, contact your hosting provider or cloud server host to ensure that your complaint ticket is open and being worked on. More importantly, stay in touch for timely updates. 

4) Open a 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. 

Lastly, reassure everyone that you have all hands on deck working on resolving the outage problem. 

5) Communicate with Your Customers and Other Stakeholders

Establish honest, straightforward and workable Service Level Agreements (SLAs) with your customers. Alongside this, 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. Furthermore, it will help you avoid fallout from disgruntled customers. 

Contact Redpalm to Ensure Quick Recovery from Network 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. 

We offer a range of helpful IT services like proactive monitoring, vulnerability assessments, incident response, technology procurement and so much more. 

Our robust IT solutions coupled with our expertise are ideally suited for your bespoke requirements.

Book your free IT consultation with us today to further discuss your IT strategy in detail!

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