The more intertwined technology and business processes become, the more active organizations must be to maintain a stable network. Unfortunately, monitoring the network infrastructure often takes a back seat to putting out everyday fires. Often, small business owners and office managers spend little time on day-to-day operations such as checking nightly backups, downloading the latest virus signatures and patching systems with the latest security updates. This type of maintenance is a necessary and never ending battle. Organizations that are not able to be proactive with their networks are often faced with extensive downtime and lost productivity when an unplanned outage or failure occurs.
Monitoring is especially challenging for small to medium-sized businesses that do not have the resources to effectively handle this task. Enterprise corporations usually have enough discretionary income to cover an unexpected disaster. Small and medium-sized businesses frequently can not afford this luxury. Companies of all sizes want network stability and would like to plan for unforeseen events.
In many cases, a company's file server sits in a phone closet and is a bit of a mystery. It is crucial to the business, but no one really knows how it runs or if it is working correctly. More often than not, performance problems lead to one solution: a reboot.
Companies that are able to effectively monitor their server/network infrastructure gain a number of key benefits that affect the bottom line. So what can a small business do?
1) Migrate toward a common brand of PCs and software. The similarity between systems saves time reviewing and updating.
2) Use an antivirus program that has a central management console allowing antivirus status checks from one PC instead of checking all of them.
3) Ensure the backup system e-mails results daily and take action to resolve errors. If e-mail is not an option, check the backup reports. Test restoring a file at least monthly to verify the system really works.
4) Weekly, check the server event logs for errors. Some systems, such as Microsoft Small Business Server, will e-mail daily status reports.
5) Turn on automatic updates for each PC. For servers, set the updates to download but not install. During the weekly event log checks, you can choose to manually install the updates.
There are proactive solutions that constantly monitor the “pulse” of your server and trend the results in easy to understand reports. These reports can be used to identify problematic applications, memory utilization issues, or determine whether your system spontaneously reboots (just to name a few).
Typically, it is too much of an investment for a small or medium-sized business to hire a dedicated IT resource to handle this monitoring. Fortunately, a number of service providers offer server and network monitoring for a small monthly investment. Small and medium-sized businesses basic network needs are no different than a large enterprise. It is simply a question of how to effectively handle your proactive network monitoring and gain peace of mind.
For more information contact Cliff Kaiser at [email protected].
Monitoring is especially challenging for small to medium-sized businesses that do not have the resources to effectively handle this task. Enterprise corporations usually have enough discretionary income to cover an unexpected disaster. Small and medium-sized businesses frequently can not afford this luxury. Companies of all sizes want network stability and would like to plan for unforeseen events.
In many cases, a company's file server sits in a phone closet and is a bit of a mystery. It is crucial to the business, but no one really knows how it runs or if it is working correctly. More often than not, performance problems lead to one solution: a reboot.
Companies that are able to effectively monitor their server/network infrastructure gain a number of key benefits that affect the bottom line. So what can a small business do?
1) Migrate toward a common brand of PCs and software. The similarity between systems saves time reviewing and updating.
2) Use an antivirus program that has a central management console allowing antivirus status checks from one PC instead of checking all of them.
3) Ensure the backup system e-mails results daily and take action to resolve errors. If e-mail is not an option, check the backup reports. Test restoring a file at least monthly to verify the system really works.
4) Weekly, check the server event logs for errors. Some systems, such as Microsoft Small Business Server, will e-mail daily status reports.
5) Turn on automatic updates for each PC. For servers, set the updates to download but not install. During the weekly event log checks, you can choose to manually install the updates.
There are proactive solutions that constantly monitor the “pulse” of your server and trend the results in easy to understand reports. These reports can be used to identify problematic applications, memory utilization issues, or determine whether your system spontaneously reboots (just to name a few).
Typically, it is too much of an investment for a small or medium-sized business to hire a dedicated IT resource to handle this monitoring. Fortunately, a number of service providers offer server and network monitoring for a small monthly investment. Small and medium-sized businesses basic network needs are no different than a large enterprise. It is simply a question of how to effectively handle your proactive network monitoring and gain peace of mind.
For more information contact Cliff Kaiser at [email protected].