How Can Your Business Avoid Server Downtime?

4 Tips for Increasing Your Company's Server Uptime

14:23 31 May 2021

From a business perspective, few things are costlier than server downtime. Just several minutes of downtime is enough to dramatically impact your bottom line and prevent you from reaching your revenue goals. But how can you ensure your servers stay up?

 

The Cost of Server Downtime

 

The cost of server downtime is a lot higher than most business leaders realize. It varies dramatically depending on factors like revenue, industry, time of day, total outage time, and the number of people affected. But regardless, it’s expensive.

 

“According to Gartner, the average cost of IT downtime is $5,600 per minute,” The20.com explains. “Because there are so many differences in how businesses operate, downtime, at the low end, can be as much as $140,000 per hour, $300,000 per hour on average, and as much as $540,000 per hour at the higher end.”

 

Amazingly, 98 percent of all organizations say a single hour of downtime costs them at least $100,000. Roughly 81 percent say it costs them more than $400,000, while 33 percent of enterprises report a 60-minute downtime cost of $1 million to $5 million.

 

In addition to direct costs, there are plenty of indirect costs as well. Consider that every disruption affects your team and shifts their attention away from the tasks that they should be focused on. Furthermore, it affects employee morale and customer satisfaction – the long-term costs of which are hard to accurately quantify.

 

Whether you’re a small business or large enterprise, the cost of server downtime is significant. The more proactive you are about addressing this issue, the smoother things will be. 

 

4 Ways to Increase Company Server Uptime

 

You can’t control every factor, but you have more influence than you realize. Here are some simple ways you can increase your uptime and avoid the hefty cost of server downtime. 

 

• Choose the Right Host

 

The right host makes all the difference. If you’ve experienced several instances of server downtime in the past, you’ll want to consider switching to a new hosting provider. And when you do make the switch, be as selective as you possibly can. 

 

Every host should be able to provide you with data that shows their uptime track record. Generally speaking, you’ll want to go with the highest uptime percentage you can find – even if it means spending more. (You’re going to pay one way or the other. It’s better to pay a slight premium for higher uptime than to deal with the high costs of server downtime.) 

 

• Hire the Right IT Support Service

 

You can’t afford to let minor issues become major problems. Neglecting your system and deferring maintenance is a recipe for disaster. Avoid this issue by hiring an IT support service to help with all of your technology needs. For best results, look for one that promises to be on call 24/7/365. This ensures you get prompt service every time (which lowers the risk of downtime).

 

• Monitor Uptime in Real-Time

 

How do you know when a server is about to fail? The key is to monitor its status in real-time so that you become aware of potential red flags. There are plenty of different networking monitoring solutions out there – you just have to choose one that fits your needs. A tool like Spiceworks can keep you informed by letting you know when unusual events happen (including abnormally high CPU or memory usage). 

 

• Increase Security

 

A robust cybersecurity plan is obviously important, but so is physical security. 

 

Did you know that a large percentage of server outages are actually caused by humans? Whether accidental or intentional, these human-caused outages can be avoided with better access control. Doors to the server room should remain locked at all times. Furthermore, only individuals with a specific need to access the server room should be given credentials to do so.

 

Adding it All Up

 

You don’t spend much time thinking about your servers when everything is running smoothly. But the moment something goes wrong it becomes overwhelmingly clear how important uptime is. Hopefully, this article has given you a few useful pieces of information you can use to avoid IT downtime and keep your business running more smoothly and profitably for years to come.