How to Prevent Cloud Downtime with Private Infrastructure

At a Glance

Cloud outages are expensive. Private cloud infrastructure offers stronger resilience, with redundant hardware, encryption, georedundant UK data centres, robust networks, and 24/7 monitoring. helping businesses minimise downtime. High availability design, automated failover, and disaster recovery planning protect critical data and ensure continuity when failures occur.

The Cost of Cloud Downtime

Beyond being just an inconvenience, a cloud outage has a ripple effect throughout your organisation. According to an IBM study, the average cost of IT-related downtime for businesses can be as high as £4,300 per minute. Now, as more companies rely heavily on the cloud, they need to be prepared to expect the unexpected and minimise the negative effects of a sudden cloud downtime.

If you’re an IT manager, ops director, or SME owner in the UK, and you’re worried about the downtime risk from the cloud, this guide is for you. We explore how resilient private cloud infrastructure from BlackBox Hosting can keep your business running, especially when it really matters.

What Is a Cloud Outage?

A cloud outage is when cloud services go down unexpectedly, preventing your business from accessing data, applications, or critical systems.

According to Parametrix’s Cloud Outage Risk Report, critical cloud service interruptions among the top three public clouds increased by 18% and lasted about 19% longer in 2024 than in 2023.

Common causes of downtime include cyber attacks, hardware failures, misconfigurations, and even local power and connectivity issues. In 2023 alone, internet failures led UK businesses to lose over 50.5 million business hours and £3.7 billion, according to a report by Beaming. There’s a lot your business can learn from recent cybersecurity breaches.

Unlike public clouds, having private cloud infrastructure offers you better control, with UK-based support to quickly recover your operations. But to make your private cloud truly resilient, you need a backup, business continuity, and disaster recovery plan for your small or large business.

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Building a Resilient Private Cloud Infrastructure

Building a resilient private cloud begins with its infrastructure design. Private cloud providers often move away from the rigid, one-size-fits-all approach of many public cloud hosts and allow UK businesses to customise their environment to build resilience in every layer.

The key elements of an outage-proof private cloud infrastructure include:

Redundant Hardware

Single points of failure are among the biggest risks in IT. Redundant hardware like dual power, mirrored servers, and multiple storage arrays significantly reduces this risk.

Dual Power Supplies

Each server has two independent power sources, so if one fails, the other takes over.

Mirrored Servers

An exact copy of your server runs in parallel, so if the primary server goes down, you can easily transfer workloads.

Multiple Storage Arrays

Instead of depending on a single disk, your business data is stored across multiple disks or storage units (RAID configurations), reducing the chances of data loss if one disk fails.

Data Protection

Losing your valuable business data can be more damaging than unexpected downtime. With layered protection that combines encryption, replication, and redundancy, your business can avoid breaches while keeping your data safe and your business running.

Encryption

Encryption ensures data is protected at rest (when stored) and in transit (when moving across networks)

Replication

Private cloud hosts often support the automatic duplication of data across different servers, so you have real-time copies of your data.

Georedundant UK Data Centres

A resilient private cloud stores data in more than one location to safeguard against everything from regional outages to natural disasters and facility-based failures.

Strong Network

Even the best hosting servers are no good without a stable network. A strong, resilient network offers multiple ways for data to flow, so connectivity isn’t lost.

Redundant Firewalls and Switches

Having dual security and networking devices prevents any failures or bottlenecks.

Dynamic Routing

Dynamic routing protocols automatically find the fastest and most efficient network path.

Multiple ISPs

In the event that one ISP goes down, traffic automatically reroutes to the backup provider.

Round-the-Clock Monitoring

There are warning signs to watch out for before an outage takes place. Working with a provider that offers continuous monitoring and alerts gives your IT team a fair chance to act before minor issues escalate.

Real-time Monitoring

Private server infrastructure monitors server performance, storage use, and network traffic.

Predictive Analytics

Predictive analytics identifies and forecasts potential failures with the help of AI-driven systems.

High Availability Architecture

A private cloud built with high availability architecture keeps your systems online, even if a server component fails.

Load Balancing

Load balancing ensures traffic is evenly distributed across multiple servers, minimising the risk of a single point of failure.

Clustering

A clustering approach links servers to share workloads and allows the backup to take over when one server fails.

Automated Failover

Automated failover systems actively detect failures and instantly switch operations to backup resources effortlessly.

Disaster Recovery

A disaster recovery (DR) system supports business continuity, where your operations bounce back quickly after downtime. UK SMEs, especially with critical workloads, greatly benefit from a comprehensive backup and recovery plan that is designed to minimise financial loss and maintain customer trust.

A private cloud disaster recovery plan can include:

Identifying which applications, databases, and systems are needed to keep your business operational.
Defining RTO (Recovery Time Objective) & RPO (Recovery Point Objective). RTO is how quickly your system will be restored, and RPO points to how much data loss is acceptable.
Implementing incremental and full backups based on how critical your data is.
Regular testing, keeping the plan working when you need it the most.

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