Preparing your network for the May Bank holidays

The month of May – boasting two bank holiday long weekends – offers most working professionals a well-deserved break from the daily grind. However, for many IT professionals a long weekend can mean a longer to-do list as they work to make sure websites and applications can cope with any extra holiday demand.

With most of the U.K.’s 31 million workers on holiday, many websites experience an increase in traffic. Additionally, network issues can take longer than normal to resolve. Any shortcomings in either area can negatively affect the business and, for some organisations, result in dreaded loss of revenue.

Destiny Bertucci, SolarWinds Head Geek, gives her top three tips for getting your network up to speed for next month’s bank holidays.

 

Monitor traffic

Your mind may be slipping into holiday mode, but before you completely check out of work make sure you have a clear back-up procedure and robust back-up systems in place – just in case your primary network decides to go on holiday as well.

By implementing network device monitoring, the IT team is automatically alerted if websites or applications begin to experience high traffic, empowering the team to implement optimisation measures and make sure that if the worst does happen, any outage time is minimal.

 

Go remote

Bank holidays can turn a busy workplace into a ghost town. While the tumbleweed roams the office landscape, you need to be prepared to log-in and manage your network remotely if things go south.

Adopting remote administration IT tools helps the IT team make the most of available resources effectively and efficiently, wherever they are during a bank holiday weekend.

 

Stay current

The lead up to the bank holiday provides an opportune moment for IT professionals to assess if their process and procedures for a network outage are still current.

Make sure your recovery plans are up-to-date and reflect any improvements or changes you’ve made to the network. And take the time to brief your team on new or altered recovery procedures, ensuring they’re prepared and ready to act if issues occur.