Top Strategies to Optimize IT Infrastructure Stability

Many businesses rely on the stability of their IT infrastructure, but its importance may be underappreciated until something goes wrong. Unstable infrastructure can lead to data loss, decreased revenue, and reputational damage. If you are looking to stabilize your IT operations, experience optimal performance, and keep your modernization projects moving forward, learn more about the top strategies you can use to improve your IT infrastructure stability.

What is IT Infrastructure Stability?

IT infrastructure stability is the process of maintaining the reliability and security of hardware, software, power, cooling and networks within an organization’s IT system. Stability depends on minimal downtime, predictable performance, security, regulatory compliance, and scalability. Industries like online retail, healthcare, finance, and manufacturing require strong IT infrastructure to maintain operations, meet regulations, and ensure business continuity.

Key Components of IT Infrastructure Stability

Because IT infrastructure management involves so many different moving parts, different factors can influence and impact its stability.

Hardware Reliability

Hardware is more reliable when it is up to date, maintained frequently, and kept in optimal environmental conditions. If you have older hardware, it can be more susceptible to failure. Dust, humidity, and temperature outside of acceptable ranges can cause unnecessary wear and tear to hardware over time. An unstable power supply to equipment can also decrease your hardware’s stability.

Software Reliability

Much like with hardware, having regularly updated software can help protect businesses from security vulnerabilities. Reliable software, especially from established vendors, is often tested more rigorously and patched frequently, reducing the likelihood of bugs and security flaws compared to in-house or smaller-scale developments. As businesses undergo digital transformation, introducing new applications can sometimes create compatibility issues with existing software, leading to instability. Ensuring proper patch management, version control, and compatibility testing helps maintain a stable and resilient IT infrastructure.

Network Connectivity

Network infrastructure should also be regularly maintained to keep connectivity reliable. Businesses should monitor their networks to confirm that they can handle demands from network traffic. If traffic exceeds expectations, performance can slow down, making IT systems less stable. Another weak point can come from internet service providers (ISP), so it’s important that the ISP you choose is also reliable. 

Security Measures

Cyberthreats like ransomware, malware, and phishing attacks can sideline business operations. Organizations need to implement strong security policies and procedures, as well as use tools to monitor and protect infrastructure from cybersecurity threats.

Scalability

Some organizations will experience more fluctuations in demand than others. A stable infrastructure can handle fluctuations in peak usage periods and automatically allocate resources to meet the needs of users. Cloud solutions are often more scalable and flexible compared to on-premises frameworks.

Assessing Your IT Infrastructure Stability

How do you decide whether your IT infrastructure is adequately stable? Performance monitoring tools, security assessments, and regular audits can determine whether the measures you have in place are sufficient.

Performance Monitoring Tools

Performance monitoring tools can observe your system and application performance—and it can also create and manage logs to find potential problems.

Monitoring tools can measure values like disk space, network traffic, CPU usage, and memory utilization to alert you to early issues that may impact stability. AppDynamics and Dynatrace can identify possible performance issues in applications. Splunk and ELK Stack can be used to collect and analyze logs that may point to problems.

Security Assessment Techniques

Security vulnerabilities can be incredibly damaging to organizations, so performing vulnerability scans with tools can help businesses find vulnerable spots in applications and systems. You may even decide to go further and conduct penetration testing, simulating a cyberattack to find ways bad actors may exploit vulnerabilities.

Regular Audits and Maintenance

Regular assessments are one of the best ways you can keep stability issues at bay. Back up critical data and test disaster recovery plans at least once per year to ensure that they will work when they’re really needed. Maintain aging hardware by keeping it clean, replacing old components, and upgrading or swapping out equipment when necessary.

Strategies for Achieving IT Infrastructure Stability

Once you have an idea of where you are and where you want to be, consider implementing some or all of the following measures to reach a higher level of IT infrastructure stability.

Implementing Redundancies:

By adding redundancies, copies of critical elements in your infrastructure, you reduce the likelihood that your operations will be impacted in the event of an outage, cyberattack, or other disruption. For example, if you use redundant servers, the second can take the place of the first should one fail. Back up data in geographically distinct locations to protect against natural disasters.

Utilizing Cloud Solutions:

Cloud solutions offer offsite protection for your workloads, something that is not as readily available in an on-premises model. Consider using cloud solutions for data backup and disaster recovery to start.

Regular Updates and Patching:

Keep software updated and patch vulnerabilities when they are discovered. You may want to choose one day per week or per month for a patching day, depending on the nature of your business. Use that same day to update firmware on network devices and other hardware components.

Disaster Recovery Preparedness:

A comprehensive disaster recovery plan should include the order in which things happen when a disaster occurs, and the responsible parties to carry out each step. You may also want to consider working with an outside party for disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS). By developing a detailed plan and testing it regularly, you can make recovering from outages more of a proactive versus reactive process.

Capacity Planning:

Think about what your future capacity needs will be and plan for how you will accommodate your business growth. Capacity planning isn’t just about handling the next year, it’s about how your business will adapt and change its approach to meet needs that are five to 10 years in the future and beyond.

Challenges with IT Infrastructure Continuity

Even if you know all the best practices, your business can still face challenges in maintaining your IT infrastructure continuity, including: 

• Balancing Costs and Resources: Most companies don’t have unlimited budgets, so at some point, you’ll have to decide which stability strategies will have the greatest impact on your business. For example, making everything redundant can quickly multiply costs. It can be tricky to maintain a high level of reliability and security while seeking out cost-effective solutions.
• Managing Outdated Technologies: Much like with hardware, having regularly updated software can help protect businesses from security vulnerabilities. Reliable software, especially from established vendors, is often tested more rigorously and patched frequently, reducing the likelihood of bugs and security flaws compared to in-house or smaller-scale developments. As businesses undergo digital transformation, introducing new applications can sometimes create compatibility issues with existing software, leading to instability. Ensuring proper patch management, version control, and compatibility testing helps maintain a stable and resilient IT infrastructure.
• Coordinating Across Disparate Systems: Even if you can integrate new tools, you may find that two new tools you like don’t play well together. Your infrastructure may have also developed data silos over time, which make it harder to collaborate across teams. These silos and other disparate systems in your organization can hinder visibility and make it difficult to gain a comprehensive view of your entire infrastructure.

Best Practices for Maintaining IT Infrastructure Stability

The best way to counter these challenges is by being proactive, documenting changes appropriately, and working effectively with new and existing vendors.

Proactive Monitoring:

Real-time monitoring of key performance indicators can catch problems that threaten stability quickly. You should have a view on CPU usage, disk space, application performance, and memory utilization on-demand, for example. From there, you can create automated alerts to let administrators know if problems have occurred, allowing the team to move on them faster.

Documentation and Change Management:

All components of your IT infrastructure should be documented. When you make changes to this infrastructure, you should take on a formal change management process to predict possible integration and migration issues before they manifest.

Vendor Management and Support

Not only do you need to build a strong internal approach to IT stability, but you should also build relationships with external vendors to receive fast, effective support when something goes wrong. Define service expectations through service level agreements (SLAs) and set regular times to evaluate vendor performance.

Future Trends in IT Infrastructure Stability

While some matters of infrastructure stability remain consistent from year to year, emerging technologies are also influencing the IT infrastructure landscape.

AI and Automation

Artificial intelligence (AI) enhanced IT stability with tools that can learn from your previous performance using predictive analytics to anticipate possible future hardware failures. This allows for proactive maintenance and reduces your operational downtime.  

AI systems can also identify security threats and even respond to them in real-time with automated rulesets. You can also automate resource allocation, changing server capacity to meet demand, for instance.

Edge Computing

Edge computing, as the name implies, processes data closer to the source of the data, or the “edge,” to reduce latency for end users. Edge computing enables real-time decision-making. Plus, it also reduces an organization’s reliance on a centralized data center, shifting the processing tasks to a more distributed network. This distribution, paired with shorter data transmit times, can also improve data security.

Enhanced Cybersecurity Measures

Enhanced cybersecurity measures directly contribute to IT stability by preventing disruptions caused by cyber threats. AI-driven security analytics, zero-trust architectures, and multifactor authentication (MFA) enhance protection against unauthorized access. As cyber threats evolve, businesses are adopting layered security approaches to ensure continuous uptime and data integrity.

Modernize Your IT Strategy for 2025 and Beyond

Whatever modernization projects you have in store for 2025 and beyond, TierPoint can help you keep up with the latest trends while maintaining stability. Learn more about the five up-and-coming trends all businesses should know about.