28/01/16

Server Care – Keep the Heart of your IT Infrastructure Beating

Heart_of_SystemA business server is the beating heart of your IT Infrastructure. It is the storage place of all company data, the control centre for user
settings, and the gateway that allows all devices on your network to
communicate with each other and the outside word.

Complete server outages can have critical consequences
within a business; including email downtime, loss of data and costly repairs.
Likewise, a slow or poorly performing server can cause similar problems intermittently.

These are the critical actions you need to take to ensure your businesses server is running at its best and reduce
the chance of problems arising:

1. Updates

Ensure
regular updates are installed
– Like with PC’s, Windows releases regular
operating system updates for servers on weekly basis. These are important for
improving the performance of the server, patching problems or bugs and
improving security. Failing to install regular updates poses a significant
security risk to your server and over time, cause its performance to deteriorate.

How we can help

Regular system updates require a Server reboot before they can be
applied. Our server monitoring service will schedule automated reboots out of
hours to apply the updates.

Large
service pack updates
– While regular weekly updates are important for
security, Service Pack updates on the other hand are released to improve or
enhance the performance and usability of server operating systems. Service
packs are generally much larger than weekly updates and need to be manually
installed and applied, meaning more business downtime.

How we can help

We can notify you when a Service Pack is due
for installation on your server and can arrange a time out of hours for it to
be installed; reducing any downtime in business hours.

2. Security

Have Anti-virus
software installed on your server
– As with PC’s, servers also require
anti-virus software to keep them protected from trojans and malicious
software. An infection on a server can be catastrophic for the business and
its data.

How we can help

We work closely with ESET Anti-virus and can provide you with suitable
anti-virus package.

Invest in
email Spam filtering
– Spam emails are not only highly frustrating put
potentially dangerous for your system. Malicious emails; cleverly formulated to
look genuine, can easily infect a PC before moving over to the Server and
eventually the whole network.

How we can help

Our spam filtering service will block any fake, spam or infected
emails before they ever reach your server ensuring you only receive genuine
emails.

3. Disk Space and your Data

Monitor
your Server storage space
– All emails, user files, customer data and
software data is stored on your server, this provides a central location for
all workstations on the network to access the data. As business grows, so too
is the amount of data which the company holds. If the storage capacity of your
sever is reached your operations and emails will grind to a halt.

How we can help

Our monitoring service will keep an eye on your server space. Once it passes a certain threshold we analyse the breakdown of disk usage on
your server and recommend the best course of action. This might be deleting old files, archiving data to an external storage location such as an
external hard drive or upgrading the hard drives within your
server.

4. Memory

Keep your
server performing well:
RAM (aka Memory) determines the amount of processes
that can be active on your server at any one time. As the amount of users
increases within a business; so too does the amount of pressure on the server’s
memory. Symptoms of not having enough RAM include delays in actions such as
opening applications, server-based software becoming unresponsive and slow
boot-ups.

How we can help

RAM usage is another feature that we monitor
using our server monitoring service: if your system starts to max out its RAM
usage we’ll take a look at what you are using your server for and send you a quote for extra
server memory.

5. Power

Protect
you server from power fluctuations
– A server is a fragile piece of equipment;
dips, spikes and outages in power can cause serious and costly damage to the device.
Using a UPS (uninterruptible power supply unit)will help to regulate the power
flow to the server and shut down the server gracefully in the event of a power
cut, thus reducing the chance of internal damage.

How we can help

We can take a look at the server model you are using within your
business and recommend a suitable UPS to keep you protected. Our server
monitoring service notifies us if your server goes down, we will then hep you get you back up and running.

5. SUMMARY

There are many features to keep an eye on to ensure your
server is running at its best and reduce the chance of any downtime. Our server
monitoring service offers you peace of mind that potential issues will be identified
before they cause further damage. In many cases these issues will be fixed without
you ever knowing there was a problem.

If you’re interested in our server
monitoring service, or would like a free audit on your server and IT
infrastructure, then please contact us on 01743 290588 or email
katy@networksupportsolutions.co.uk