How to Prevent Datacentre Downtime

Datacentre downtime is the half of business process or production due to a technical glitch, unavailability of applications, network outage or a natural disaster. Datacentre downtime may possibly cripple an enterprise without a thorough business continuity plan and, in some situations, even result in irreversible harm.

Downtime is unaffordable because of the expenses and difficulties it creates. It cripples operations encompassing everything from email to chat billing to charging to customer support. Fraud is made possible as crucial data is inaccessible when it matters.  There may be severe data losses, significant time, effort, and resource expenditures for data recovery, as well as legal and regulatory repercussions.

Datacentre downtime is caused by a variety of issues and is the most common issues that datacentres face -   

• System Failure: Old or unstable IT infrastructure with inadequate monitoring tools, leads to system failures and thus downtime.
• Human Error: Unfortunately, human error does exist, and downtime can occur as a result of breakdowns in processes or improper human execution.
• Natural Disasters: Natural disasters like a hurricane to an earthquake, or even a man-made disaster such as a major power grid outage can lead to major downtime in data centres.

Depending on the frequency and extent of downtime, it can have both short- and long-term effects as listed below:

• Lost Business Opportunities: In today's linked digital world of today a brief period of downtime can have a detrimental effect on the organization. Bad experiences like client dissatisfaction or service delays might be brought on by downtime. Such situations quickly alienate potential customers as well as current ones.
• Data Loss: Downtime due to cyberattacks, server or network outage can result in corrupt, damaged, or stolen data. Unexpected downtime, like a server outage, may expose sensitive information or create security holes that hackers can use to gain unauthorized access.
• Damaged Brand Image: An organization's dependability and reputation might be compromised by a single downtime incident. Repeated downtime incidents can have negative impacts on the brand's reputation and lead to negative consumer feedback.
• Lost Productivity: Operations cannot be carried on or critical systems cannot be used during downtime because of various reasons which leads to loss of productivity and the stalling of important work.
• Cloud Outage: Despite the rising reliance on cloud services, firms' infrastructure is not always as dependable as many people believe. Even major cloud service companies have service issues and outages. Any downtime for modern, data-driven organizations is a costly and annoying disturbance. There will be missed productivity, lost money, and possibly lost clients if your business doesn't have a plan in place to lessen the effects of these disruptions.

Although achieving 100% uptime and preventing downtime is not always possible owing to uncontrollable factors, there are strategies to come as near as possible. There are several ways to reduce data center downtime:

• Detailed planning: This should be done to minimize downtime. Whatever situations you may fall into, whether it is a disaster, or system failure, you should have a plan in place to get out of it.  
• Proper system maintenance: You can reduce downtime by having maintenance actively performed on your system.  
• Good management: In order to maintain good uptime, you should have all of your planning and system maintenance performed by an experienced team of data centre professionals.

In addition to these, datacentre downtime can result in significant financial losses. The cost of downtime might vary depending on the size and type of your company as well as the duration of downtime. As per Statista’s survey, which included respondents from across the globe, 25% reported that the average hourly downtime cost of their servers was between $301,000 and $400,000.

Even though there are challenges with the cloud outage, it is more effective. The cloud significantly lowers downtime and keeps businesses online in comparison to other options. Hosting data offsite in a cloud environment ensures its security in case of an emergency. Additionally, your data may be restored fast and effectively with an ultra-low latency network. With high availability solutions that provide cutting-edge security and dependability, your company can focus more on getting the work done and less on avoiding outages.

As life becomes more data-driven the datacentres of today are essential in the digitally connected world. Disruption in datacentres can become a real threat to organizations of all sizes. With a datacentre's typical downtime costing thousands of dollars per minute, having a comprehensive understanding of the frequency, cost, and reasons of downtime can aid in managing downtime effectively and preventing the loss of resources and data. It is essential that businesses not just focus on datacentre, but invest in the complete infrastructure. Datacentre maintenance firms can provide better bandwidth, internet connectivity, power sources, cooling systems, security measures, 24×7 surveillance, and thus allow organisations to function optimally.

--By Ian Shearer, Managing Director APAC & EMEA Park Place Technologies

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