The IT network, in a modern organization, is the lifeline of its business, as this is the infrastructure that helps deliver important communications, business orders, and allows employees to collaborate and be more productive. Any disruption/outage in the network can lead to considerable losses in terms of revenue and productivity. Hence, it is important to ensure that the network is up and services are available on a 24x7 basis.

We discussed the network lifecycle in Chapter 1, Network Building Essentials, where we talked about the various stages of a network. To recall, the stages are prepare, plan, design, implement, operate, and optimize. We have focused the chapters so far on the design and implement stages. In this chapter, we will talk about the operate phase of...