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Predictive Maintenance With AI

5 min read
SysadminNetwork

Sysadmin

AI can trend disk growth, CPU drift, memory leaks. Act before the 3am page.

Network

Traffic trends and capacity exhaustion are predictable. AI spots them early.

Predictive Maintenance With AI

TL;DR

  • AI can predict some failures: disk filling, memory leaks, capacity exhaustion. The signals exist; AI can surface them.
  • Don't expect magic. AI works best on gradual degradation, not random hardware faults. Start with the predictable stuff.
  • Use predictions to schedule maintenance, not to auto-fix. Verify before you act.

Predictive maintenance isn't new—we've been watching disk usage for decades. AI adds pattern recognition across many signals at once. The goal: fix things during business hours, not at 3am.

What AI Can Predict

  • Disk capacity. Growth rates are learnable. "At current rate, /var fills in 12 days." Classic, reliable.
  • Memory pressure. Slow leaks, growth trends. AI can forecast OOM before it happens.
  • Network capacity. Traffic growth, saturation points. Useful for capacity planning.
  • Certificate expiration. Not "AI" per se, but automated tracking. Combine with AI for "what else is expiring?" visibility.
  • Performance degradation. Gradual latency increase, increasing error rates. AI spots trends humans miss in daily noise.

What AI Can't Predict Well

  • Random hardware failure. Disk dies. NIC goes bad. AI doesn't have a crystal ball.
  • First-time events. No historical pattern = no prediction. Novel failures will surprise you.
  • External factors. DDoS, vendor outage, fiber cut. AI might detect after the fact; prediction is limited.
  • Human error. Someone runs rm -rf in prod. AI can't foresee that.

How to Use It

Tier 1: Predictions with high confidence (disk, certs, clear trends). Schedule maintenance. Low risk.

Tier 2: Predictions with medium confidence (memory pressure, capacity). Investigate before acting. Don't auto-remediate.

Tier 3: Novel or low-confidence. Use as a signal for deeper monitoring, not as a trigger for action.

Manual process. Repetitive tasks. Limited scale.

Click "With AI" to see the difference →

Quick Check

What remains human when AI automates more of this role?

Do This Next

  1. Identify your top 3 "predictable" failure modes (e.g., disk full, cert expiry). Set up AI or script-based prediction for them. Measure: did we avoid an incident?
  2. Create a "predictive maintenance" calendar. When AI says "disk full in 2 weeks," schedule a ticket. Treat it like patch Tuesday—planned, not reactive.