Why Do My Servers Keep Crashing?

An organization’s worst fear is to have a server failure where essential data may be lost forever leaving your organization unable to function properly.

According to research, server failure rates rise noticeably as they age. The failure rate for a server within its first year is 5%, compared to a four-year-old server’s yearly failure frequency of 11%. Understanding server failure rates is helpful as it enables a more effective risk management as well as long-term planning for server administration and maintenance expenses.

Dealing with a server crash is never enjoyable. Users may encounter significant disruptions if a large company’s server collapses, resulting in significant financial loss. If your host’s server crashes and you are an individual with a single website, you are at the mercy of the host leaving you to pace away until the problem is fixed.

A server crashing is bound to happen at some point time so it’s a good thing to note what exactly a server crash is and why it happens.

What is a Server Crash?

A server crash is a catastrophic failure of a server that can affect the entire operation of a business as well as cause a severe financial loss. Server crashes usually occur when a server goes offline, preventing it from performing its tasks. There can be issues with the server’s numerous built-in services once it crashes. Additionally, the impact will be more significant, and the repercussions will be more severe because the server serves many customers.

• Video Website: A significant accessibility issue within a video website makes it impossible to watch any online videos. It would be a catastrophe if the server’s data was lost and many writers’ original animations and movies could not be recovered.
• Financial system: A rock-solid server is necessary for a financial plan that processes millions of transactions every second. Since everyone’s capital exchanges were impacted, the loss is incalculable.
• Competitive games: There may be tens of millions of participants online for most popular and competitive games. There will undoubtedly be a lot of upset gamers if they were all disconnected from their beloved game.
  

Reasons for Server Crash

A server may go down for various reasons, including occasionally, a single fault or multiple problems co-occurring at other times.

The following are the most typical reasons for server crashes:

• Startup Failure: This is the most common reason for a server crash. When your server starts up, the code must run before it starts doing its job. If some of these steps fail, your server will not start properly.
• A Software Error: The most common reason for a server crash is an application error, such as an unexpected exception or an operation that cannot be completed because of execution limits on the system.
• A Hardware Failure (such as a power outage): If the cause of your crash is a power outage, there may be no way to recover without restoring your backup data. If this happens, you should contact your hosting service provider and ask them what steps they recommend to restore service.
• Errors in Configuration Files or Other System Files: Sometimes errors occur in configuration files or other system files that result in incomplete or incorrect actions being taken by your application when it starts up, which can lead to crashes.
• Security Vulnerabilities: Security vulnerabilities are typically caused by hackers, allowing them access into your server. If you have a secured server, you should not be worried about this problem as your server is well protected from hackers.
• Overheating: If the server cannot keep itself cool, it will be unable to function correctly. If a server has an overheating problem, the system will shut down and restart itself. This may be caused by a faulty fan or power supply unit (PSU).
• Virus Attacks: Viruses can cause server crashes in many ways. One way is that they can infect your server’s operating system or hardware and cause it to crash when it tries to process requests from the internet. Another way is that they make your computer run slowly and eventually crash, which causes fewer requests for content from your server and makes it more likely that its hard drive will run out of space and have to be replaced.
• Expired Domain: Domain names are like URLs (uniform resource locators) for websites, but they have expiration dates set by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). When the expiration date passes, the domain name becomes available again, so any website using that domain must be changed manually. This can cause issues when your site goes offline due to a server crash because you no longer have access to the proper domain name.
• Plug-in Error: This happens when a server gets stuck in some loop and cannot exit it because it gets stuck in an infinite loop. For example, if you have two routers connected with a switch between them, but only one router works appropriately while the other one doesn’t, then both will be affected by this issue. If you don’t want this to happen, make sure both routers have enough power or buy a new one.

Server Crashes: Numerous Causes, Numerous Solutions

No two servers are the same and they all tend to crash for a variety of reasons. While some of them we have slight control of, others are out of our hands. There are, nevertheless, precautions we may take to reduce the risk. Although they aren’t impenetrable precautions, they can mitigate end-user disruptions and downtime.

Your server and surrounding network may go down for either a few minutes or several hours, depending on the skill level of your hired IT team managing them. You can also partner with a server expert like Protected Harbor.

Protected Harbor takes care of server maintenance and upgrades to keep your systems running at peak efficiency. We have a team of engineers to look after your servers and data centers to keep them safe from threats like natural disasters, power outages, and physical or cyber security issues. We also monitor your networks to ensure that your systems are always connected to the internet and that your data is secured with maximum efficiency.

Our engineers are certified in troubleshooting a variety of server hardware and software. We also provide 24/7 tech support, ensuring that your critical applications stay up and running.

We offer a 99.99% SLA (Service Level Agreement) plus have a proven track record with clients of various industries from e-commerce and SaaS to healthcare clients. We offer flexible, scalable plans to suit your business needs.

Let our team of experts assess your current server setup and get a free report today.

Outages and Downtime; Is it a big deal?

Downtime and outages are costly affairs for any company. According to research and industry survey by Gartner, as much as $300000 per hour the industry loses on an average. It is a high priority for a business owner to safeguard your online presence from unexpected outages. Imagine how your clients feel when they visit your website only to find an “Error: website down” or “Server error” message. Or half your office is unable to log in and work.

You may think that some downtime once in a while wouldn’t do much harm to your business. But let me tell you, it’s a big deal.

Downtime and outages are hostile to your business

Whether you’re a large company or a small business, IT outages can cost you exorbitantly. With time, more businesses are becoming dependent on technology and cloud infrastructure. Also, the customer’s expectations are increasing, which means if your system is down and they can’t reach you, they will move elsewhere. Since every customer is valuable, you don’t want to lose them due to an outage. Outages and downtime affect your business in many underlying ways.

Hampers Brand Image

While all the ways outages impact your business, this is the worst and affects you in the long run. It completely demolishes a business structure that took a while to build. For example, suppose a customer regularly experiences outages that make using the services and products. In that case, they will switch to another company and share their negative experiences with others on social platforms. Poor word of mouth may push away potential customers, and your business’s reputation takes a hit.

Loss of productivity and business opportunities

If your servers crash or IT infrastructure is down, productivity and profits follow. Employees and other parties are left stranded without the resources to complete their work. Network outages can bring down the overall productivity, which we call a domino effect. This disrupts the supply chain, which multiplies the impact of downtime. For example, a recent outage of AWS (Amazon Web Services) affected millions of people, their supply chain, and delivery of products and services across all of their platforms and third-party companies sharing the same platform.

For the companies who depend on online sales, server outage and downtime is a nightmare. Any loss of networking means customers won’t have access to your products or services online. It will lead to fewer customers and lesser revenues. It is a best-case scenario if the outage is resolved quickly, but imagine if the downtime persists for hours or days and affects a significant number of online customers. A broken sales funnel discourages customers from doing business with you again. There the effects of outages can be disastrous.

So how do you prevent system outages?

Downtime and outages are directly related to the server and IT infrastructure capabilities. It can be simplified into Anticipation, Monitoring, and Response. To cover these aspects, we created a full-proof strategy that is AOA (Application Outage Avoidance), or in simpler words, we also call it Always on Availability. In AOA, we set up several things to prevent and tackle outages.

• First of which is to anticipate and be proactive. We prepare in advance for possible scenarios and keep them in check.
• The second thing is in-depth monitoring of the servers. We don’t just check if a server is up or down- we look at RAM, CPU, disk performance, application performance metrics such as page life expectancy inside of SQL. Then we tie the antivirus directly into our monitoring system. If Windows Defender detects an infected file, it triggers an alert in our monitoring system so we can respond within 5 minutes and quarantine/cleans the infected file.
• The final big piece of this is geo-blocking and blacklisting. Our edge firewalls block entire countries and block bad IPs by reading and updating public IP blacklists every 4 hours to keep up with the latest known attacks. We use a windows failover cluster which eliminates a single point of failure. For example, the client will remain online if a host goes down.
• Other features include- Ransomware, Viruses and Phishing attack protection, complete IT support, and a private cloud backup which has led to us achieving a 99.99% uptime for our clients.

These features are implemented into Protected Harbor’s systems and solutions to enable an optimum level of control and advanced safety and security. IT outages can be frustrating, but actively listen to clients to build a structure to support your business and workflow – achieving a perfect mix of IT infrastructure and business operations.

Visit Protected Harbor to end outages and downtime once and for all.