Planning For Scheduled Downtime
Sooner or later, you’re going to have to have a little downtime on your network. You can use the time to install patches, upgrade your hardware, and install some hardware, all of which will be needed in short order. Nobody wants to shut down, and all businesses want to get back up and running as soon as possible, so here are some tips to minimize both your downtime and the headaches associated with having it.
- Always try to schedule your downtime for when your system is the least busy. Planned downtime, by its very name, is something you plan. It’s not about averting a crisis or mitigating damage and hoping to get things back up soon – it’s about scheduling time for the system to be down while you do a little maintenance. Only you can know when you are least busy, but chances are that midnight on a weekend is a better time than 9:00 am on a Monday morning. You don’t want your staff out of work or your clients and customers to have to wait, after all.
- All the same, there will likely be those few people who want to access the network when it is down, even in the middle of the night. Be sure to warn your employees, clients and customer that this down time is coming. That was they can plan around it and know that it’s not a security issue. Tell them when you’ll be back up and running, and that the system will be operating even more smoothly than before.
It’s better to have a little planned down time now than an unplanned emergency later, but it doesn’t have to be a big hassle, either. Plan and give notice, and you’ll be back to business in no time.
Daniel Gottilla author
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