By Tech Experts Staff
Most small businesses have onsite servers, which is a change from years past when small businesses didn’t see the benefit of having a server in place and instead depended on sharing within a workgroup.
With the great benefits of having a server in-place comes some additional costs to make sure your investment continues to be beneficial.
Many businesses that put a server in place are always defensive about having server maintenances done within a month after putting a server in place.
The number one phrase we hear after putting a new server in is “Are you sure that needs done, we just put that server in?”
The problem with taking this approach with your new server is that you already put a substantial investment in your new hardware and want it to run great for a long time.
Neglecting the server, even if it is for a short period of time, or even if it was “just put in,” is dangerous.There are items that can go bad or cause problems if not addressed, even on a new server.
The first item and most arguably one of the most important are the server updates. Servers have to be kept up to date especially since they physically host your important data.
Allowing a server to become outdated is highly risky and potentially allows hackers access to your server via security exploits in the operating system, Internet Explorer, Adobe, etc. If these items go without their security updates you run risk of data breach.
The second item that is one of the most important items that we check is the health of your RAID disks.
Most servers (at least the ones we install) have a RAID configuration of some sort configured to help protect your server in the event of a hard disk failure.
Hard disk failure is not a matter of if it will happen but rather when it will happen.
Since this is the case we generally set our clients up on a RAID 5 configuration which allows up to two RAID disks to fail at different times.
The redundancy provided by RAID 5 configurations allows for a large amount of protection from data loss but does not guarantee it. If a business’s server was not having regular maintenances done it is very possible to have the RAID disks fail and lose all the data because it was not caught.
We have had clients bring in computers that are brand new with failed hard drives so it can and does happen at any time, even when they are brand new.
During our maintenance we also go through the logs on the system carefully combing over the entries looking for any instances that could potentially indicate a problem or an upcoming problem if let go.
If this is not done your server could be showing that it is starting to have problems but you would never know it until it is too late.
One of the logs, the Security Log, allows us the ability to see whether or not your server has had unauthorized attempts to login to it. Yes, we mean hackers trying to get in your sever and to your private data.
These are just three of the numerous areas we check with the server maintenances to ensure that your server, whether new or old, is running properly and continues to do so for years to come.
If a server is not properly maintained, it can degrade quickly into an almost useless piece of equipment and the investment you put into becomes a waste as well – not to mention the potential data loss.
Don’t waste your company’s hard earned money! Invest in systems maintenances, every month. This is the only way to prevent major issues with your server and avoid data loss or compromise.
Tech Experts is southeast Michigan's leading small business computer support company. A Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, Tech Experts is your one-stop IT service company, offering "No Problem Support" to more than 200 businesses and individuals throughout southeastern Michigan and northwestern Ohio. Located at 15347 South Dixie Highway, Monroe, MI, 48161, Tech Experts can be reached at (734) 457-5000.