Major Causes of System Downtime In Order of Frequency

Hardware problems and natural disasters are not at the top of the list! Human causes such as programming bugs, scheduled outages, and user mistakes (The "Oops Factor") are more frequent.

  • Software defects/failures
  • Planned administrative downtime1
    • Operating system or application upgrades
    • Database administration
    • System or Network Reconfiguration
  • Operator Error
  • Hardware Error/Maintenance
  • Building or Site Disaster
    • (Fire, explosion, etc.)
  • Metropolitan area or Regional Disaster
    • (Earthquake, Flood, Tornado, Blizzard, etc.)

1 Just because it's "planned" doesn't mean it's not downtime! Planned Downtime may be as much as 25% of all downtime.

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