The meta site is only for asking questions about Server Fault. Your question here is related to System Administration, so it would normally belong on the main site. However, the question is far too broad. Server Fault's purpose is not to tell you how to be a system administrator, but rather how to accomplish certain tasks and resolve specific problems.

That aside, putting band-aids on real problems is ignoring the real problem. You still have the real problem and now you've expended energy/resources to ignore it instead of fix it. Accountants like to call these efforts "sunk costs", meaning that energy/resource is gone now and will never be of any value in the future.

Of course there are requirements outside the control of System Administrators, and sometimes all we can do is put a band-aid on the problem. It is our job to explain to the "higher ups" that there's a problem, we're limited to bain-aiding it, and that we'd like to have the freedom to fix it. They should decide if that's an appropriate action for the continuity of the business. Hopefully they'll get it right... that's *their job*.

Further, I'd guess that your lack of redundancy is what's making it impossible to actually fix problems. Redundancy is expensive, but allows greater uptime, easy of administration, planning, and a myriad of other benefits. There are pages around the net to help explain these benefits to the "higher ups", so they can make a more informed decision. But if it's not their business model, you'll be stuck with what you're doing now. I will say that most business go the redundancy way eventually.