Some Top Tips for Using Google More Effectively

At Server Sentry we are obviously enthusiastically into anything IT related – and in a very big way.
We work hard to keep ahead of the game as far as innovations and developments are concerned, particularly if they are targeted at making things easier.

We know though that not everyone is as comfortable with IT or perhaps they just do not have the time to discover new functionality or experiment with what’s there...Read More

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Can You be Sure That Your Email Has Been Read?

There may be any number of situations within which you would like to know whether or not someone has read an e-mail you have sent them.
We are often asked whether this is possible and the answer is “yes” but with certain common sense limitations.
As there are a number of different email options, here we will talk about services such as Windows Live Mail, as this is still perhaps one of the most widely used approaches...Read More

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Make Sure your Data is Fully Deleted

These days, many of our clients are becoming keener to reuse existing IT kit – especially the computers themselves. Whether this is due primarily to economic and cost cutting measures or to a more green and environmental approach to reducing the use of the planet’s resources is something that might vary from case to case.

What is important though is to acknowledge that, for security reasons, it is imperative that any residual information held on the hard disk of the computer is completely removed prior to its reuse.

At Server Sentry we know that this involves more than just the reformatting of the hard disk. Yes, reformatting might make data held there inaccessible to many users but the fact of the matter is that it is still there and can be accessed by those who know what they’re doing....Read More

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Cloud Backup Services – Bandwidth Considerations

Cloud backup systems can offer the ultimate in security for your precious data.  Depending upon the volume and frequency of your backups, it may be important to ensure that you have an adequate communications bandwidth in place to support this approach. 

We are sometimes asked to explain the variations in cloud backup services and why they affect something called ‘bandwidth’.

This is something best explained in a conversation but here is a quick overview!

All of the critical data and systems in your IT environment should be backed up.  That’s to ensure that in the event of one form of disaster or another, your critical data could be rapidly restored to enable your business to keep running.

Through our cloud backup services, all of this can be done automatically and invisibly to you.  Your data will be backed up and stored in a secure location and you will never have to worry about things such as disk copies and so on!

However, not all IT installations are the same. 

For example, some organisations have largely entirely outsourced their IT operations meaning that they don’t have big boxes sitting around on their premises.  All of their databases, applications software and so on, are stored in the Cloud already. 

That means that when their systems are being backed up, it is effectively cloud-to-cloud and nothing of their data being backed up needs to go through the communication lines between their office and the outside world.

Customers that have their file servers and software in-house can still use cloud backup services to protect them but when the data is being copied, it will be moving from the customer’s site down through one form of wire or another to a secure cloud location.

In the case of larger organisations, this can mean very substantial volumes of data are going up and down your communication lines to the outside world on a regular basis.  Depending upon the amount of space and speed that your line provider offers you (also known as its bandwidth) that might, at times, be something of an issue.

Let’s not speculate further here though. Instead, why not call us for a discussion about your specific situation and we can offer you very precise advice on cloud backups and whether or not they may be an issue for your communications infrastructure.

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Why do Application Programs ‘Fall Over’?

If you are using an application (sometimes still called a ‘program’) then from time to time it may apparently ‘go wrong’.

If the problem is sufficiently serious it may cease working altogether (called colloquially ‘falling over’) and need to be recovered by your operating system, such as windows etc.

Unfortunately, there are far too many reasons behind a program malfunction to list here. They could, quite literally, number thousands.

However, here are a few of the more commonly encountered ones we’ve seen and fixed at Server Sentry, sometimes as part of our data recovery solutions service.

• Errors in the program code itself. These are those old-fashioned traditional ‘bugs’ that may have been accidentally encoded into the program by the original programmer. Sometimes they can’t be fixed other than by reporting the program to the company that produced it.

• Incompatibility between the program and its host operating system. For example, some applications may function perfectly under Windows 7 but not Windows 8.

• An incompatibility between the program and other programs it interacts with. This is similar to the above point but may involve other application programs on your system rather than the operating system.

• Using the program outside of its design parameters. This usually arises when someone is trying to get the program to do something that the original designers didn’t think of and therefore didn’t build in support for. A variation on the theme is, for example, putting far more data into a program than it was intended to handle, so its capacity becomes an issue.

• Human error. This covers a surprisingly large number of apparent problems and arises when someone is trying to do something with the software incorrectly. Of course, arguably no program should ever fall over because somebody pushed the wrong button but it can happen!

Diagnosing and then fixing the problem is a specialist task and it’s one that we are proud to say we excel at.

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