Network downtime can totally kill your organisational productivity. Every minute your network isn’t functioning represents even more labor and financial losses. Restoring your network is vital, but it’s even more effective to prevent downtime in the first place.
How do you minimise network downtime in your organisation?
The power of network monitoring software
Network monitoring software is arguably the best resource for minimising network downtime – and facilitating smoother IT operations overall. It’s designed to help your organisation gain more visibility into the devices and connections within your network, plan the expansion of your network, and identify potential issues proactively.
Using this software, you’ll be able to more effectively plan your network, spotting potential root causes of downtime and addressing them to prevent downtime as much as possible. Additionally, as the name suggests, network monitoring software encourages ongoing monitoring, so you can see how information and resources are flowing through your network in real time.
This way, if you do experience downtime, you’ll be able to get notified immediately, track down the root cause of the issue, and address it so you can get things up and running again. It’s a two-pronged approach that enables organisations to protect against downtime and end downtime when it does occur.
Create a thorough disaster recovery plan
Network monitoring software is a huge help, but it can’t do everything for you. If you want to be positioned to address network issues and downtime reasonably effectively, you need to have a thorough disaster recovery plan in place.
Most people understand that disaster recovery plans are designed to protect your organisation from natural disasters and other major incidents. If there’s a massive cyberattack on your business or if an earthquake triggers significant disruptions, you need protocols in place for how to respond quickly and efficiently – or else your business will suffer damage beyond just a short-term inconvenience.
However, a good disaster recovery plan should also accommodate small and temporary “disasters,” including brief outages and points of compromise to your network. In your plan, be sure to identify key players, responsibilities, vital steps to follow, and how to conduct analyses that can help you identify points of improvement to make in the future.
Integrate redundant measures
Network redundancy is a way of building backups into your system, guarding it against certain types of damage and failure. As a simple example, an uninterruptible power supply (UPS) can provide continuous power to your devices in the event of a blackout or similar power disruption (at least for a while). If you have systems in place to “kick in” when any of your devices, systems, or connectors fail, no single point of failure can bring your network down. The more redundancy you build into your network, the better.
Keep your systems updated and patched
Sometimes, outages and other problems occur simply because you haven’t committed the latest patch or update. Always keep your systems updated and patched; it’s not just about minimising downtime, but is also about preserving your security.
Take advantage of load balancing
Load balancing is a strategy to help you utilise network resources efficiently. If one resource is being overutilised and another is being underutilised, you can divert streams from the former to the latter. Doing this consistently and automatically is key to making sure your network resources are being used optimally; you can think of it like using every available lane on a highway.
Upgrade your network infrastructure proactively
An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, so work on upgrading your network infrastructure proactively – before you have the misfortune of experiencing an outage. This is especially important if your business and its resource demands are growing.
Invest in the best equipment you can afford
Similarly, invest in the best equipment you can afford. Spending more doesn’t guarantee better devices and materials, but better equipment is often more expensive.
Migrate to the cloud (if you haven’t already)
While there are some disadvantages of cloud computing, it’s ideal for securing network uptime and maximising security and productivity in most organisations. Think of it as a way of delegating the responsibilities of maintaining uptime to a competent business with the knowledge, resources, and experience to do it successfully. If you haven’t already migrated to the cloud, consider doing it now.
Backup everything
It’s also a good idea to back up all your data – and do so consistently in real time. This way, if any of your systems are compromised, you’ll be able to quickly and easily roll back to a previous version.
With the help of network monitoring software and a variety of preventative strategies, you can keep network downtime in your organisation to an absolute minimum. Even better, if downtime does occur, you’ll be in a position to jump in and restore your network swiftly.
