Common Causes of Downtime
Zero In On Infrastructure Vulnerability to Data Center Downtime
Leading Causes of Downtime
- Power Outages – 48%
- Accidental Data Deletion – 31%
- Employee Created – 29%
- Virus/Malware – 25%
- Application Failure – 20%
Power Related Outages – Vulnerabilities to a data center’s power still rank as one of the leading causes of unplanned network outages and can often be catastrophic. Particularly costly are UPS (Uninterrupted Power Supply) related failures (this includes batteries) and generator failures.
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To minimize the impact that power outages have on data center operations, and to prevent a potentially catastrophic unavailability of the data center, a dependable backup system is needed. This ensures the backup of critical data and applications is always in place in the event of equipment failure.
The integration of comprehensive infrastructure monitoring and management tools also minimizes the costs associated with identifying and repairing power system failures. Accidental Data Deletion and
Employee Created Downtime –
Simple human error is a prevalent cause of downtime. Whether months of data is unintentionally lost in a backup error, a power cord is unplugged, a busy IT technician overlooks routine maintenance and alert monitoring, or there is an error in judgment during an emergency, to err is human and apparently quite frequent as well.
A study by the Gartner Group, an IT research and advisory firm, projected that through 2015, 80% of downtime will be due to people and process issues.
In the fall of 2010, foursquare – a widely used mobile check-in app – had a highly publicized outage of eleven hours, followed by another shorter service disruption the next day. All three million users of the app were affected and it was a chain of human mistakes that led to both outages. IT techs noticed that a server was storing too much data, but as the support team tried to resolve the issue, all the servers went down.
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Regardless of proper training, or the quality of IT technician hires, human mistakes will likely always lead to instances of a downed data center or network, especially considering the expected learning curve of adapting to new technologies. Ensuring proper communication amongst team members and adequate training at all levels is critical. Of course, it goes without saying that having a comprehensive backup strategy is also a necessity to counteract downtime and ensure business continuity regardless of who is having a bad day.
Virus/Malware/Hacks – SMBs are often guilty of thinking they are immune to hackers, viruses and malware. According to a National Cyber Alliance and Symantec survey, 77% of SMBs don’t believe they’re at risk for cybercrime while 83% admit to having no formal measures in place to counter these threats. This isn’t merely a threat to your data; it puts your bank account and the sensitive data of your customers at risk.
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Passwords should be regularly changed every few months. They should also be strong. This means no more passwords like “password” or “1234567.” Employees must be educated on security and precautionary measures. And there is no excuse for not having data backed up in this era of cloud computing and virtualization – where the entire contents of physical server – including the operating system, applications, patches and all data – can easily and cost-effectively be grouped into one software bundle or virtual server.
Application Failure – Many applications or their components contribute to recurring downtime. While virtualization offers many multi-faceted advantages it has also further exacerbated overlapping applications in the infrastructure. One small application component failure is now likely to impact many applications.
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It is critical that all components are profiled and there is a general understanding as to what each application does – the hardware resources used by the application and the software it integrates with. Identifying an owner will allow for better monitoring and recognition of failure points.
SMBs can benefit from a little help when it comes to properly implementing and leveraging this new technology to strengthen their disaster recovery efforts. Access to a 24/7 NOC (Network Operations Center) team offering remote monitoring and management solutions, along with a 24/7 help desk, can help SMBs improve backup, monitoring and troubleshooting processes for maximum uptime and business continuity.
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