Downtime is the period during which processes are stopped due to application unavailability, a technical failure, a network outage, or a natural disaster. The term usually applies to networks and servers but can refer to any process involving machines. During downtime, a computer system, server, or network is offline or not available at all, and enterprise employees cannot perform tasks or serve customers.

These situations can paralyze the work of an organization that is critically dependent on online tools and, in some cases, can even cause irreparable damage. In this post, we are going to analyze what downtime is, what exactly it can do, and how to deal with it. But before we continue, we would like to recommend you an excellent check service outage.

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How to avoid downtime?

Here are a few ways you can avoid this unpleasant phenomenon.

Use reliable hardware

Not everyone cares about the reliability of the equipment where critical data is stored. In the pursuit of low cost, important aspects like the quality of servers, conditions of their maintenance, availability of backups, etc., are often ignored. To avoid problems with data storage when renting a dedicated or cloud server, it is worth choosing a company with a good reputation.

Take care of network infrastructure protection

It is important that the server is protected from DDoS attacks and third-party intrusions. Attackers can break into the network infrastructure by hacking into employees’ devices or by picking a password from the system. It is enough to follow the basic rules of cybersecurity. For example, do not store passwords anywhere, do not open suspicious emails, do not click on unverified links, and so on.

Create backups of data and communication channels

Creating backups helps you avoid losing data in adverse scenarios. For example, when a virtual server is deleted or reinstalled or a failed site migration occurs. In the case of a dedicated server, data backups are usually performed by the client. If two hard drives are installed, one can be used to back up data. If you rent or own two servers, the second can be left for this case.

Downtime examples

It is enough to remember some very serious cases where services were unavailable:

1. On August 14, 2003, the great blackout occurred: 40 million U.S. residents and 10 million Canadians were without power for 30 minutes.
2. On August 11, 2008, there was a blackout with Gmail as well – more than 100 million people suffered from two hours of inability to use Google Mail service.
3. On April 21, 2011, the Amazon trading site suffered a bad thing – incorrect configuration of the network equipment caused the failure of cloud services, which led to a long downtime that lasted up to four days.
4. On March 18-22, 2013, Spamhaus had a strong DDoS attack – its power reached 300 Gbit/s, which also affected the work of mainline operators.

Downtime is something you really need to keep an eye on if you want to thrive and grow. Our team has studied this issue in detail and has provided solid and working advice.