Cloud computing has completely revolutionized companies and the way they run their business. From hosting sites and applications to storing sensitive data and many other things, it’s safe to say that cloud has become an integral part of modern business.
Although most cloud platforms are pretty reliable, truth be told, they aren’t perfect, and they are prone to various problems, including outages. Even a downtime that doesn’t last too long can lead to lost revenue, decreased productivity, and many other issues that could seriously ruin its reputation.
But on a more positive note, lots of issues that are associated with the cloud can be prevented by virtue of proper supervision, planning, and infrastructure management.
What Frequently Causes Downtime?
If you want to prevent downtime, then you first need to further dive into it and uncover its culprits. A lot of firms think that the most common ones are cloud providers, which couldn’t be farther from the truth.
Low-quality infrastructure design, human errors, and many other elements are typically the ones that cause these types of problems. A person can make a relatively benign mistake, like deleting the wrong resource, deploying faulty code, etc., and all of these things can bring crucial services offline.
Consequently, it’s of huge importance to detect these risks in a timely manner if you want to be sure things aren’t going to escalate. In other words, in these circumstances, prevention is the key.
Automate Infrastructure Management
Managing cloud environments manually can increase the likelihood of inconsistent configurations and potential mistakes. Infrastructure as Code (IaC) has become one of the most efficient ways to standardize cloud deployments and, simultaneously, reduce human error.
By defining infrastructure through code, organizations can make repeatable, version-controlled environments that can easily be tested, recovered, and reviewed. Speaking of this, many enterprises have the tendency to work with the top 0.7% of Terraform experts to create scalable infrastructure and make sure cloud environments stay consistent across testing, development, and production. Seasoned experts are able to identify optimization opportunities that lower operational risks, and, at the same time, take reliability to the next level.
Build Redundancy Into Infrastructure
One of the surefire ways to enhance availability is by avoiding single points of failure. If your applications rely solely on one server or one geographic region, then any problem impacting that component could easily interrupt your services.
That’s precisely why you should strive to allocate workloads across different availability zones whenever you are able to. You can leverage load balancers to spread traffic across various servers and, concurrently, configure automated failover systems that can switch to backup resources if, by any chance, something goes wrong.
Even though redundancy may result in an increase in your infrastructure expenses (which isn’t going to be anything too drastic), bear in mind that it’s actually far more cost-effective than prolonged downtime.
Pay Attention To The Systems Around The Clock
There’s no need to remind you that problems that you aren’t aware of cannot be resolved. Luckily, if you resort to constant monitoring, then you’ll be capable of detecting performance issues long before they cause any major issues.
During this process, you need to pay close attention to the crucial metrics, such as CPU usage, memory consumption, network latency, storage capacity, application errors, and response times. You need to set up automated alerts so that you can immediately find out if and when predefined thresholds are surpassed.
Keep in mind that monitoring isn’t just about detecting problems, but it is here to help you identify trends, as well. The ones that can foresee capacity issues. Something like this will allow you to properly prepare yourself and your business, and, at the same time, make the necessary changes before users notice anything.
Don’t Forget The Disaster Recovery Plans
Having a disaster recovery plan within your reach is for sure a great thing; however, it is even better if you have one that actually works. A lot of companies today tend to create backup procedures, but then they do not test them until an emergency happens, which is a huge mistake.
Then it may be too late. Therefore, it would be advisable to be a lot more diligent when it comes to this and ensure your disaster recovery plans are tested on a regular basis. Be sure to schedule regular recovery drills to verify restoration procedures, backups, communication plans, and mechanisms.
Even though cloud downtime isn’t particularly affordable, what you need to remember is that it doesn’t necessarily need to be inevitable. The truth is that no cloud environment is 100% reliable in terms of uptime; however, it can certainly radically reduce disruptions.
