After seeing the problems Jonathan had and about Robert going away and a friend taking over everything for him, I was wondering what other people would do if they couldnt run their business for a while?

Has anyone been in the situation before, or have you helped someone in that situation?

When I was freelancing, I just had regular hours when I'd help people - no hosting clients. By the time I decided to move into hosting, I had some friends / business partners with whom I worked to handle support.

I think that you can also hire a company to do third-party support on a per-ticket basis, and just give them a login to your helpdesk (if you have one). The problem there is that if support tickets aren't your primary form of communication with your clients, if they use email or IM instead...things could get tricky.

I would hire a company to take care of support while I am gone.
I try get people to use the helpdesk as much as possible for support, it can save a lot of trouble incase people send a private email or PM for support and a third party is doing support while I cant.

I do have some people that use IM for support sometimes, and there are a few that ONLY use IM, they wouldnt email, post or use the helpdesk if I wasnt online, which is a bit of trouble to be honest for when Im not here and they need support, no-one else can help then

Yes there are quite a few third party support companies with reasonable rates. You have the option of having support handled anyway you like(helpdesk, eamil, forum, IM).

I would most likely turn my reign over to my co-owner and support/security manager. And also have Steve(TheLinuxGuy) to oversee the server and make sure everything is ok I would check e-mail pretty much everyday, but not often enough. But if I were to go on a extended leave with no computer, I would do that.

Well - the point of having a business plan will also, or should also, cover this.

For myself and my company, it would depend what service to give exact details. However generally each time I'd leave it to my employees, I mean if I didn't, then why would I hire them?

However, of course, if they all turn in ill, well there are always last resorts such as outsourcing and so on. Thankfully in todays world there is no real reason to never give support, unless one cannot afford it, however if one can - then there is no reason to not be able to offer it.

I would ask someone to help