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A Business Center in your Hotel: Curse or Blessing?
Your customers asked for it, modern hospitality philosophy required it and now you have one in your Hotel: A Business Center. Your Guest now has access to the Internet to read and write e-mails, surf the Web for the latest news and they can work in...
Script Kiddies II - An advice to parents
After the feedback on the previous article, I thought that it would be beneficial to write another, exploring the Script Kiddie problem in a bit more depth. If you haven't already read the previous item "Script Kiddies - Vermin of the Internet", it...
What Does your "John Hancock" Look Like?
If you have a website and simply sign your e-mails with just your name, STOP right there! If you're not taking advantage of using a good signature line, you're missing out on promoting your business every time you send mail. So you ask, what...
What's Your Right Photo Shade
Sometimes photos would appear a little frustrating especially when there is no transparency to match color. The reason to this is that printing companies have been slow in going with the flow to accommodate new images. They often stumbles through...
Wireless Network Security
Working from home has its advantages, including no commute, a more flexible work schedule and fresh coffee and home-cooked meals whenever you want. But working from home while using a wireless local area network (WLAN) may lead to theft of...
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System Downtime
Downtime can disrupt your business, customers, and damage your company's reputation. But how do you prevent or minimize downtime? Can a server monitoring service help? To answer these questions, first we need to understand the causes of downtime. Downtime can be broken down into three distinct categories.
Category
Description
Planned
Normal downtime that is planed and scheduled in advance.
Semi-Planned
Includes software or hardware upgrades that are scheduled, but not entirely by your company.
For example: A vendor released security patches that must be applied quickly to avoid vulnerability. Your company sets schedule, but the schedule is largely driven by others.
Unplanned
Events that force immediate downtime such as: hardware/software failures; operator error by the administrator; malicious acts, disasters, ISP maintenance windows.
There is really nothing that can be done about planned downtime short of establishing totally redundant failover systems. Without redundant systems, impact can be minimized by looking for "maintenance windows" that will cause the least interruption for your business and customers. Analyzing core business hours, server logs, and purchase patterns will help in identifying periods that will cause the least disruption. Generally speaking, web sites normally experience the lowest volume on weekends around 4:00 AM to 5:00 AM. Most customers understand that some level of maintenance is required and grudgingly accept maintenance windows. Home Depot for example, updates their web site very early in the morning. When doing so a friendly message is displayed stating the system is being updated to better serve them. The message addresses the issue and gracefully presents the downtime so users are not greeted with a 404 or server not found error.
Semi-planned maintenance periods are periods that you schedule, however the timetable is normally driven by others. An example is vendor released security patches that require a reboot or a service restart. While immediate action is not required, it is in your best interest to install quickly so the associated vulnerability can be avoided. As with planned downtime, nothing can be done to eliminate this type of downtime other than the use of redundant systems. The impact of semi-planned downtime can be minimized if maintenance windows are used and user friendly message are displayed.
Of the three types of downtime, unplanned has the ability to cause the most
disruption, loss of revenue and customer confidence. While most customers understand that some degree of downtime may be required, few understand when systems simply do not respond or displays a cryptic error messages. Fortunately, several steps can be taken to lessen the impact of unplanned downtime. The first step is to knowing the system is down. Without some sort of automated monitoring in place, notification of a downed system is all too often reported by a coworker or even worse, a customer. A web search will reveal a wide range of companies offering monitoring services to meet just about any budget and business need.
Next, get a user friendly message displayed if a web site, or in the case of a file/print server notify your users of the outage. While redundant systems offer the best protection, a lot of low cost options exist. Older machines can be built, hosted, and setup to display a friendly web site down message. A quick change to a DNS entry, and the machine could be live. Telephone systems, email, intercom systems, or a nicely printed message displayed on office doors or by the elevators can all be used to alert internal users. Remember the goal is to greet people with a friendly message that lets them know you are aware of the issue and are working to resolve it.
The final step is to resolve the unplanned issue. I am always surprised at the wide range of attitudes IT staff display concerning outages. Some people are in no rush regardless of the severity, while others will move heaven and earth. It is important to set IT staff expectations. I convey that the only thing that takes priority over a virus or system outage is loss of life. Simply put, if you are giving mouth-to-mouth or pulling someone out of a burning building, you are excused. Otherwise, stop whatever you are doing and get the issue resolved. This may sound drastic, but it clearly sets staff expectations to quickly resolve outages.
Clearly, redundant systems that are monitored offer the best protection against downtime. With shrinking IT budgets over the past several years, implementing redundant systems may not be possible or practical. However, monitoring your systems, determining maintenance windows, greeting users with friendly messages, and timely IT staff reaction can all assist in lessening the impact.
Lew Newlin is CTO of SiteRecon, a provider of internet email monitoring and web site monitoring services for business.
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| Tom's Hardware |
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| HardwareCentral - Your source for in-depth computer hardware info. |
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| Apple - Hardware |
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| Ace Hardware |
| Nationwide (United States) hardware and home improvement retailer. Includes products, dealer locator and corporate information. |
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| Computer hardware - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia |
| The hardware of a computer is infrequently changed, in comparison with software and ... Personal computers, the computer hardware familiar to most people, ... |
| en.wikipedia.org |
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| Hardware - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia |
| Hardware is the general term that is used to describe physical artifacts of a technology. ... In a looser sense, hardware can be major military equipment, ... |
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| Open Directory - Computers: Hardware |
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| AnandTech: your source for hardware analysis and news |
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| Supplier of new and refurbished networking hardware and approved and compatible network accessories. Located in the United Kingdom. |
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| Slashdot: News for nerds, stuff that matters |
| From the article: "Although the news caused barely a ripple of reaction in the audience of software and hardware engineers, there are industry analysts who ... |
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| InformationWeek HardwareTech Center |
| Our hardware coverage ranges from mobile computers and PDAs to servers and supercomputers, and the infrastructure issues enterprises deal with every day. ... |
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| What is hardware? - A Word Definition From the Webopedia Computer ... |
| This page describes the term hardware and lists other pages on the Web where you can find additional information. |
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| Google Directory - Computers > Hardware |
| Hardware Central - http://www.hardwarecentral.com/ Computing-centric community providing vital information, support, tools and interaction facilities for ... |
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| Gifts: Unique Gifts & Gift Ideas at Restoration Hardware |
| At Restoration Hardware, you'll explore an exceptional world of high quality unique gifts. Browse our products to find gift ideas & more at Restoration ... |
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| HwB: The Hardware Book |
| HwB provides you with circuits, pinouts, cable/adapter descriptions and other technical information. |
| www.hardwarebook.net |
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| Reg Hardware: Product News and Gadget Reviews from The Register |
| More Gadgets Stuff. 5th December 2006 12:09 GMT. Author: Reg Hardware ... 27th November 2006 15:31 GMT. Author: The Hardware Widow ... |
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| red hat hardware compatibility lists |
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| TrueValue.com |
| Here's our tip to hang strands of lights with ease. Jeanenne & Jim Tucker Plantation True Value Hardware Richmond, TX ... |
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| A complete illustrated Guide to the PC Hardware |
| A complete illustrated Guide to the PC Hardware, Logic and Architecture. 500 easy-read articles about the modern PC. Understand the basic architecture of ... |
| www.karbosguide.com |
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