CAUTION: Your data is trying to warn you!

Your data is trying to warn you!

Your customer has been trying to get your application to work for about 10 minutes. But the application just won’t load since your main server is experiencing power-related downtime. As a result, the customer can’t complete his or her order. 

What will your customer do as a result of your application downtime? Chances are likely that he or she will seek out a competitor that can provide a working application. This means your company will lose out on this business transaction, and potentially the customer’s trust in your company.

As this example proves, uptime should be a primary focus of your data center. If your business-critical servers aren’t functioning, your bottom line will be directly affected. That is, your customer-facing application is only as strong as the network infrastructure that powers it.

How can you ensure the maximum uptime of your business-critical servers, and also your applications? You need the ability to observe the health of every one of your servers. It’s pretty rare, in other words, for a server to completely fail out of the blue. Oftentimes, servers are the victims of a “slow death,” which can occur from any of the following issues:

• Prolonged environmental exposure: Suppose you leave your data center on Friday and return on Monday to find out that your heater or air conditioning unit broke. Exposing your servers to extreme temperatures for a long period of time could greatly impact their health and performance.
• Data overload: You may have one particular server that’s been carrying a heavy workload for a long time and simply crashes due to overuse.
• Old age: Every server has a limited lifespan. If you’ve been using your servers for several years, you need to keep a close watch on them so that you can spot issues ahead of time that could potentially lead to downtime.