Taking a Broad Perspective of BCP

Many technology organizations occasionally speak of the importance of a BCP (Business Continuity Plan) in the context of IT only.

That normally involves talking about having standby equipment, off-site copies of all of your data and perhaps an entirely ready-to-go standby site in order to allow your business to carry on should there be a major disaster.
Of course, these are all extremely important areas to consider and at Server Sentry, our data recovery solutions and other related services will help you to cover off many of those topics.

It’s important though to say a few words about the need to think about the BCP in the context of things other than technology too.

For example, you may need to take into account:

1.    The loss of key expertise, if certain personnel had been injured or killed in said disaster.

2.    The loss of much of or your entire legacy paperwork.

3.    The destruction of your stock.

4.    Managing the reaction of your stakeholders and their financial holdings in your company.

5.    Potential shock and trauma to your personnel. 

These are just a very few of the many non-IT issues that you may need to cope with in the event that you were unfortunate enough to experience a disaster that massively affected your organization.

That’s why an integrated BCP is critically important and even more so is a determination to validate it.  Some organizations see the production of such a plan as being a largely administrative exercise and one that might be necessary to keep external auditors happy. As a result, these plans sometimes lack practical substance and to put it bluntly, they may not work in the hopefully unlikely event somebody needed to try and implement it.
So, take the construction of your BCP seriously and we will be only too happy to advise you further on how to go about it. 

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Using the Cloud or ‘Going Local’ – the Pros and Cons

There is nothing new about the debate relating to how much of your IT application architecture and data should be stored on your local PCs versus a big central location ‘somewhere else’.

That debate had its origins in the early 1980s and continues today, although we tend to talk about ‘The Cloud’ as that big central location as opposed to ‘the mainframe computer’ in times past.

So, what are the pros and cons of putting your applications on a platform that is actually not physically on your premises?

Pros

1. You won’t have to worry about things such as backups, upgrading your systems to cope with growing volumes, disaster recovery and so on. Your provider should do all that for you.


2. You may see significant cost advantages arising as a result of the reduced amount of IT equipment you might need to maintain on your own premises.


3. Your business equipment insurance issues may be simplified.


4. You will benefit from expert technical support (e.g. IT consulting) from your cloud backup services provider rather than needing to try and develop some of those skills within your own company.

Cons

1. To some extent, you may be reliant upon a third party for the provision of an environment that allows you to continue your day to day business.

2. You may have some understandable concerns relating to data confidentiality and access control –including legislative constraints. That last point may be a particular issue if you are considering using an offshore provider.

3. In some situations there might be a risk of escalating costs in future, though that can be mitigated with appropriate contract provisions.

Deciding upon the shape and location of your IT infrastructure is something that isn’t easy and that is why we at Server Sentry recommend that you allow us to assist with your analysis and decision-making processes. It just might help you to ensure you make the right decision.

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How Long Should You Keep Your Historic Data?

To all intents and purposes, electronic data can be stored indefinitely.

For those who are pedantic, yes, we know that electronic media can deteriorate over time and it is sensible practice to ensure that multiple copies are taken from time to time to ensure that your data is residing on the latest media.

That’s also important because storage formats can change. File and database formats of 20 or 30 years ago may be difficult to restore and gain access to unless they have been converted to more up-to-date versions.

However, the fact that you could practically keep your data forever doesn’t necessarily mean that it makes sense to do so. Although storage is typically low-cost, it nevertheless involves a certain degree of periodic administrative overhead in order to maintain catalogues etc.

There are two real drivers in terms of answering that ‘how long’ question :

• Regulatory Requirements – certain types of business are required by law to store certain types of data for a minimum number of years. Transgress here and you could find yourself in deep trouble with the law. 

• Your operational business requirements. For example, historical data can be invaluable in terms of marketing campaigns and statistical analysis in support of product development. Scrapping all of your historical operational data at the end of a calendar year might not be a sensible use of it given it could generate so much more benefit through what’s called Data Mining.

Why not contact our Business IT Support Services for a discussion of what things such as Server Sentry’s Vault Care proposition might be able to do for you in this area? They may not be able to give you an in-depth definition of what the law requires by way of data archiving for your particular type of business but we can tell you what your technical and cost options are.

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Connecting Your PC to a Large Screen - How to do it?

One of the most commonly encountered questions for us at Server Sentry arises from customers who wish to connect a PC to a wide-screen TV of some sort or another.
Here is a quick overview but things may vary a little from case to case, so don’t hesitate to pick up the phone or contact our online help desk support.

•    There are several different ways of connecting your PC to a TV screen and displaying the results of what you are doing on it.

•    At one time some of these were rather tricky but today it’s typically very simple - assuming that both your PC and TV are relatively modern.

•    If you look at your PC, you should be able to see a port labelled either ‘HDMI’ or sometimes ‘TV OUT’.

•    Look at your television and you should see a port labelled again as ‘HDMI IN’ or possibly ‘PC IN’. You may see slight variations on the terminology depending upon the manufacturer.

•    You will then need to purchase what is called an HDMI cable.  These will have a plug at each end that should fit nicely into your PC in one case and the appropriate slot at the back of your TV in the other. These cables are typically very low-cost but remember to make sure to buy one of suitable length in order to give you the maximum flexibility between where your PC and TV will sit.

•    All you will typically then need to do is to switch on your PC and TV.  You may need to select the TV channel labelled as “HDMI” or “PC IN” with the TV’s controller.  From that point onwards, everything on your PC screen should be displayed on the TV.
It’s also possible to get wireless solutions to this though that involves a slightly different approach and once again, it’s probably a good idea to give us a call before you go forward.  

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Why is my Hard Disk Whirring?

Over many years, this has without doubt been one of the commonest questions we’ve encountered at Server Sentry.

It usually arises because a customer is concerned that one of their PCs or perhaps a server appears to be constantly accessing its disk and making whirring noises - even when they aren’t actually doing anything on the system at the time.

As almost always with IT systems support, there is no one sure answer to the question.  It could have any number of causes including:

• Even though you are n’t doing anything on your system at the time, it could be automatic software that is running various routines which are making heavy use of disk access (technically called ‘disk I/O’ for Input/Output). That might include things such as software security scans, updates following the automatic download of new versions of software and so on.

• It could indicate that your disk is seriously fragmented.  That does n’t mean damaged, it simply means that individual databases and files have been split into different sections and placed on different parts of the disk.  That is perfectly normal and is the way disk space utilisation is optimised but when the splitting of logical units of data becomes very pronounced, the disk is needing to do a lot more work in order to access what you may think of as a single integrated file of data.  It is possible to run what are called disk de- fragmentation programs to help the problem.

• In some, hopefully rare, circumstances, it might indicate that you have a certain type of malware on your system.

• It’s possible that it is a symptom of potential disk controller problems.
There’s no need to get overly worried about what’s happening.
Simply call us and we will diagnose exactly what’s going on and if appropriate, assist you to take remedial action.

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Business IT Support Services and Integration

Are you disappointed with what you’re getting out of your IT?

Perhaps those new super-powerful PCs and servers you purchased just are not doing much to improve your overall software performance.  Are your efforts in videoconferencing still being stymied by pixelated screens and major lags between voice and video?  Do you keep getting error messages on your screens from certain of your applications?

It’s possible that you’re experiencing any of the above or indeed one or more of many other potential problems with your IT.  What’s going on?

Of course, we at Server Sentry Business IT Support Services cannot answer the question without knowing a lot more about your installation and business.  However, it’s possible that you have simply purchased solutions that are not optimal for your needs or perhaps they have been poorly installed and configured to begin with.

The good news though is that sometimes Business IT Support Services can make a huge difference to the way your technology systems work and without involving you in huge expenditure on revised approaches.  In the past, following a short survey of a customer site and changing a few relatively minor parameters, we have been able to resolve long-standing problems that the company had assumed they just had to ‘live with’.

In other situations, we may be able simply to recommend that you change certain of your approaches to the use of your technology and you might find as a consequence that things are far more efficient and successful.

The bottom line is very simple.  You don’t have to put up with Information Technology systems that are holding you back or simply not delivering the benefits you anticipated.  There is almost always something that can be done about such problems and often without large-scale expenditure.

That’s why we would welcome the chance to demonstrate our Business IT Support Services to you in terms of helping you integrate your processes and technology into optimum configurations.  Why not give us a call for an initial entirely free and non-commercial discussion of your requirements?

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