System administration and cybersecurity skills continue to be critical in an always on, connected world. System administrators need to build redundancy into the network infrastructure to avoid downtime. Downtime can be detrimental to the operations of a business and cause lost revenue. The type and size of the business will depend on the impact of downtime, but in any case, it should be avoided at all costs. A clear example of this has to do with the company Amazon. Amazon is one of those companies that nearly everyone is aware of. Whenever we go to shop on Amazon it almost always just works except when it doesnt. In 2018, Amazon had issues during Prime Day. It was estimated that an hour of downtime on that day cost up to $100 million in lost sales. Yes, $100 million lost in one hour may be on the extreme end of the spectrum, but it demonstrates the importance of uptime.

Explain solutions that increase uptime in a network. There are many ways to do this at various levels in a network. For example, it could be having multiple physical devices for redundancy, or it could be using software with high availability features. What solutions did you find? Were there any costs associated with the solutions? What were some interesting aspects of the solutions?