Troubleshooting server issues for enterprise organizations

Large-scale organizations follow a distributed network architecture that is spread across the world. In a typical enterprise network, servers are the foundational component. With the advent of the cloud, servers are not just confined to a single location, they are hosted on-premises as well as in cloud platforms like AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud,

Apart from the primary site, organizations also have disaster recovery (DR) sites to ensure data preservation during disasters. With servers dispersed in such a fashion, troubleshooting server issues becomes a daunting task.

Relying on manual troubleshooting across distributed data centers, branch offices, manufacturing hubs, or retail outlets can be time-consuming and vulnerable to errors. This guide explores common server issues, and offers industry-best troubleshooting practices that will serve as effective troubleshooting strategies for your organization.

What is troubleshooting server problems?

Sever troubleshooting involves the process of isolating and resolving problems that impact server performance, availability, or security to ensure business operations are seamless.

The process includes monitoring key performance metrics such as CPU, memory, disk, and network usage. It also includes analyzing historical data, identifying anomalies proactively to prevent outages.

Why is troubleshooting crucial for your business?

A structured troubleshooting strategy is a must for maintaining server health and business continuity. Here’s why your organization needs one:

• Ensure uptime: Servers host business-critical applications. So, quick resolution of server issues is important to ensure maximum availability and seamless business operations. When business operations are hampered, you risk losing profits and customers' trust, two integral aspects for business growth.
• Proactive issue detection: When you deploy a system to receive timely alerts when critical metrics like CPU, disk, or memory utilization violate thresholds, your IT teams will be able to detect and resolve anomalies before they escalate into outages.
• Enable remote management: With centralized visibility across global data centers, branch offices, and DR sites, troubleshooting becomes simple, allowing your server teams to resolve problems from any location.
• Ensure compliance: Compliance with industry standards is a mandate for organizations. If your server holding potential customer data is unencrypted that is a compliance failure and also poses security risk, so instituting mechanisms to ensure server compliance is essential.

What are some common server issues?

Here are a range of issues that are commonly noticed in servers in any enterprise environment:

System failures

Server availability is the most important metric, however hard drives, power supplies, or cooling systems can sometimes fail, causing server outages. Overheating due to poor ventilation, or fan system failure can also degrade performance, eventually delaying deadlines and leading to SLA breaches.

Network connectivity issues can also negatively impact servers. Misconfigurations, firewall issues, or damaged cables can disrupt server connectivity, leading to timeout errors, and server downtime, commonly seen in distributed setups with remote branches or DR sites.

Performance bottlenecks and application problems

Companies adopt virtualization technique and deploy VMs on the physical server. Improper VM management can lead to VM sprawl. Further, misconfigured operating systems and outdated software can cause outages or slow down server performance, impacting compliance.

When servers slowdown, it can cause sluggish performance of end user facing platforms like websites or applications and affect digital user experience significantly.

Security threats and resource constraints

Weak, or outdated passwords, unattended vulnerabilities, or lack of role-based access control mechanisms can easily pave the way for threat actors to gain access to servers hosting critical systems, which can prove costly to your business.

Servers provide the fundamental function of providing resources to all your workloads; lacking visibility into how your critical resources are used can place excessive load on servers and lead to slow response times.

How to troubleshooting server issues?

Here is a practical and effective approach that helps in the efficient and quick resolution of server issues:

• Define the scope: The first step is to determine the impact of the issue. For example, a single server in a branch office or multiple servers in a region. Then collect historical reports, analyze them to narrow down the problem.
• Inspect the physical layer: Check hardware components like cables, power supplies, and cooling systems with the help of on-site technicians to locate hardware problems if any.
• Troubleshoot connectivity: Use ping or traceroute to diagnose network issues. Verify DNS settings and check your firewall rules to ensure communication across data centers, cloud platforms, or DR sites.
• Track and monitor usage: Check real-time CPU, memory, and disk utilization to identify the issue, also review historical data with the help of reports to understand usage trends and detect negative behavioral patterns.

Advanced troubleshooting with AI and ML capabilities

While the previous section covers the traditional best practices, which are valuable, your troubleshooting can be completely taken to the next level by adopting a robust server monitoring software.

• Centralized dashboards for visibility: Modern tools offer dashboards displaying real-time metrics (e.g., CPU, memory, network usage) across on-premise, cloud, and DR sites. With customizable widgets you can gain insights on critical issues, such as high disk usage in a certain branch office server by having a glance at the dashboard, accelerating the diagnosis.
• ML-Based anomaly detection: Today, server monitoring tools uses machine learning (ML) to learn from past server behavioral trends and automatically set alert thresholds for important KPIs effectively reducing false positives significantly.
• Visualization tools: Remote monitoring of servers is possible with the help of visualization techniques like Rack views, which provides a visual representation of the server layouts, helping teams locate issues (e.g., a failing drive in a remote data center) and guide technicians, minimizing on-site visits.
• Automated workflows: AI and ML capabilities not just helps in narrowing down the root cause but greatly helps in incident response. With traditional automation, you can handle routine tasks, like restarting services or clearing disk space. However, AIOps (AI in IT operations) goes far beyond that. Moder AIOps solutions can detect anomalies, reduce noise by correlating related alerts, perform root cause analysis, forecast potential failures with predictive analytics, and even trigger automated remediation workflows.
• Predictive analytics: ML based solutions forecast resource needs based on usage trends and help you avoid deficit of critical resources. For example, tools with ML capabilities predict traffic surges before a seasonal global sales event, helping you expand your resources before hand.
• Seamless integrations: The troubleshooting process is incomplete without integrations with ITSM tools such as ServiceNow or ServiceDesk Plus. With these integrations, server issues detected by your server monitoring software are automatically converted into tickets, assigned to the appropriate teams/technicians, for faster resolution and incident management.

Troubleshooting: The core of business continuity

In this digital age, servers are the lifeline of any business. They host applications, process transactions, and store sensitive data. So, any disruption, whether it’s a slowdown or a complete outage, can lead to lost revenue, unhappy end users, and customers. This is why instituting a strong troubleshooting strategy is vital.

Investing in a powerful server performance monitoring tool is an important part of this strategy.

Modern tools, with AI and ML capabilities, can complement this strategy by helping your server teams stay agile and efficient. ManageEngine OpManager is an affordable, powerful server health monitoring tool that comes bundled with automated workflows, ML based automatic threshold configuration, root cause analysis (RCA) effectively helping organization of all sizes ensure the health of servers, thereby protecting business continuity and improving end user experience.

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