Reduce Your Downtime While Reading Uptime Reports

Server uptime is an important metric to review in your environment. An extremely long uptime might mean that a server isn’t responding to remote shutdown and restart commands or has been overlooked in the regular maintenance cycle. An extremely short uptime might mean a server is experiencing blue screens and automatically restarting itself. Uptime statistics can even be helpful in determining whether an off-hours hotfix installation actually took place.

Realizing the importance of reviewing servers’ uptime statistics, you might already be using a tool to get this information. If you’re responsible for many servers, you’re probably painfully aware that reviewing the uptime statistics for many servers can take a lot of time. To ease the burden of this task, I wrote a script named UptimeReport.bat. This script obtains the uptime statistics for the specified servers, sorts the statistics, and reports them in a way that makes it easy for you to see the uptime numbers that don’t look right. You can have the uptime report emailed to you in a comma-separated value (CSV) or HTML file. At the top of the report, you’ll find the most recently rebooted servers (i.e., those with the shortest uptime). At the bottom of the report, you’ll find the servers that have been on for the longest period of time. The report also includes a section that specifies any servers that were inaccessible when the script ran. When you get this script implemented in your environment, a quick glance can give you clues to potential uptime problems. . . .