Small Business I.T. Best Practices

A used PC strategy for business desktops

2009-06-24T09:56:00.000-07:00

Business owners are watching every penny these days, but often find their employees struggling with old computers that take more attention and waste more time than they save. A good PC strategy can keep your employees productive without spending a lot of money.

Last time we talked about a three year computer lifecycle strategy that’s best for most small businesses. That keeps costs low and predictable, but sometimes even $500 per desktop is too much. Today we will show you how buying used PCs from eBay can keep employees productive even when you can only spend $150 per desktop.

You count on your employees being able to use their computers to get their jobs done quickly and without hassle. If the computer is too old to run applications, crashes often, or isn’t running Windows XP Pro, you are probably losing money because they are working hard just to get the computer to do its job. You can solve this problem by replacing those ancient and under-powered machines with used, capable machines from eBay.

For typical office applications like word processing, spreadsheet, email and web site use, you don’t need much computer. A Pentium 4 with 512 Mb of RAM and Windows XP Pro should be plenty. For all the PCs in your office that are older than that or haven’t been upgraded to Windows XP Pro, you can save money by upgrading to a used machine from eBay.

The Computer section on eBay is awash in perfectly-good, powerful XP machines that are just now coming off lease and dumped by big corporations. You can pick up these machines for $80 to $150 and “upgrade” your office PCs and your employees’ efficiency.

It is critical to buy the right machines and follow a few simple steps to make this a productive, cost-saving method for saving money. You also need a person on staff who is comfortable with loading programs on PCs and connecting cables. If you have one of those, the following steps are for you. If not, try the three year computer lifecycle strategy we talked about last time so you are counting on the support you get from new PC purchases.

Big picture – buying and using used PCs

The basic process for finding and using used PCs is as follows:

(More detail to the follow steps are available on Doug's blog)

Search for 3-4 year old PCs with Windows on eBay
Erase the PCs and re-install Windows XP Pro from scratch
Install anti-virus software, update Windows and finish installing modern web browsers and your application software
Make a ready-to-restore backup copy before you start using the PC
Swap the PC out with the ancient PC your employee hates

Searching for the right model of PC

If you stick to major brands (like Dell and IBM) and business-class models of those brands, you’ll find they keep drivers available for download for years. They also have the best Windows XP support as these models were designed for XP and most bugs were found and fixed over their lifespan already.

The models you want to look for would be the business models from Dell, IBM or HP. For instance, Dell’s OptiPlex line was built to last longer and have fewer changes so businesses could count on the same reliability for years. IBM and HP have similar business models that are still capable and a great deal at $80-$150.

Within a given model line, like OptiPlex, you want to find a specific few model numbers or names that are good enough to run Windows XP Pro and your applications, but old enough that they are bargains as bigger companies unload their leased machines.

A great example is the Dell OptiPlex GX280. It typically comes with a Pentium 4, often has 512 Mb of memory or more, and was almost always shipped with Windows XP Pro.

You don’t want any CPU earlier than a Pentium 4 and you don’t want the under-powered Celeron CPU. So, look for a Pentium 4 at 2.8 GHz or faster. You also don’t want anything less than 512 Mb of RAM or memory as Windows XP Pro will need at least that much to run decently. Machines with 1 Gb of RAM are perfect, and you can find cheap new memory for these machines for under $50 if you need more.

One very important thing to look for is a COA for Windows XP Pro. You want your auction to include this certificate of authenticity and its serial number so you can reload Windows with a valid license. You also want Windows XP Pro so you get all the networking your business PC needs.

Lastly, you should only be looking at auctions that include a keyboard, mouse and LCD monitor. LCD monitors last longer than CRT monitors and takes far less electricity and desk space. You should find complete PCs in with all this for between $80 and $150.

Example eBay searches

Dell OptiPLex GX280

http://computers.shop.ebay.com/items/Desktop-PCs__gx280?Processor%2520Type=Intel%2520Pentium%25204&Processor%2520Speed=2%2520GHz%2520or%2520more&Memory%2520%2528RAM%2529=512%2520MB%2520or%2520more&Operating%2520System=Windows%2520XP%2520Professional&_catref=1&_dmpt=Desktop_PCs&_fln=1&_sacat=179&_ssov=1&_trksid=p3286.c0.m282

HP Pentium 4 machine with Windows XP Pro

http://computers.shop.ebay.com/items/Desktop-PCs_?Brand=HP&Processor%2520Type=Intel%2520Pentium%25204&Processor%2520Speed=2%2520GHz%2520or%2520more&Memory%2520%2528RAM%2529=512%2520MB%2520or%2520more&Operating%2520System=Windows%2520XP%2520Professional&_dmpt=Desktop_PCs&_fln=1&_sacat=179&_ssov=1&_trksid=p3286.c0.m282

Key factors for cost-effective used PC buying:

(More detail to the follow steps are available on Doug's blog)

Only look for major vendors (Dell, IBM, HP)
Stick to major model lines (OptiPlex, Latitude)
Only buy from reputable eBay vendors
Look for best-priced, not-too-old, still-powerful configurations
Look for complete systems
Be sure to get Windows XP Pro COA and CD
Choose the best form factor
Microsoft Office or OpenOffice

Setting up the used PC

When you buy a used PC and get it for this cheap, the hidden price you pay is having to erase the PC and set it up for business use. If you’ve got a budding geek on staff, this hidden cost won’t set you back. If you’ve picked up an intern for the summer, they’ll get some good experience and you’ll get very, very cheap PCs.

When the PC arrives, you’ll want to verify it works. Plug in the keyboard, mouse and power, but don’t plug it in to your network. You don’t want anything on this unknown PC infecting your network. If you find the PC doesn’t work, contact the eBay seller, let them know you got a DOA unit, and arrange for a return.

Once you’ve determined the PC is in good working order, you’ll want to use your Windows XP Pro reinstallation CD to erase the whole machine and reinstall Windows from scratch.

Be sure to keep the used PC unplugged from the network until after you’ve reinstalled Windows and applied service pack 3 (SP3). You don’t want your new machine to catch a virus.

Then install your corporate standard for anti-virus software or a free one like AVG, verify the Windows firewall is enabled, and update your operating system and drivers by connecting to the Internet and using Windows Update over and over until everything is up-to-date.

Next you’ll want to load the standard office applications you use like word processor, spreadsheet, email client and web browser. You should load the most-recent version of your corporate standard web browser so vulnerability is kept to a minimum. Internet Explorer 8, Firefox 3, Safari and Chrome are the best choices.

Once you’ve got all the software loaded, you should take one last step before giving the “new”, faster computer to your waiting employee. You should make a complete, restorable backup using a “bare metal” tool like Norton’s Ghost. This process only takes 30 minutes and it yields a set of CDs or a single DVD that lets you restore the whole PC in just five minutes. If the PC gets infected or slows down after a year of more and more software loaded on it, you can pop in the Ghost CD for this particular machine and be back to this saved, pristine state in only five minutes. If you stick to just one brand and model of PC, the Ghost CD you make with the first PC will be usable on all the other same-model PCS, reducing your setup time to just minutes!

Planning for the future

You can use this technique to save money in the short term, but don’t expect these PCs to last for years and years. As soon as you can, adopt a planned, 3-year new PC lifecycle as described last time. That will keep your costs low while gaining access to genuine manufacturer support and smoothing out your expenditures.

Avoid Microsoft’s Vista if you can. Their replacement, Windows 7, will be available by the end of the year and promises to be better than Vista and requiring far “less” computer so you won’t spend as much.

For those of you following my blog on business strategy and tips, check in next time for how to keep these PCs, both new and used, safe from viruses and backed up so spilled coffee won’t put you out of business. The Doug Lucy blog is specifically for these I.T. and computer-oriented business tips.

Conclusion

So, when saving money counts but you still have to upgrade ancient, failing PCs, you can use the above technique to buy used computers from eBay, refresh them, and put them to work in your business!

Small business strategy for buying computers and laptops

2009-06-19T13:22:00.001-07:00

Everyone has to have a working PC these days to get their jobs done and buying new computers for the office can get quite expensive. When you add to that all the upgrades they’ll need and the support costs when they start to fail, you might wonder if it’s all worth it.

The answer is, of course, you can’t do without the computers when you’re in business, but you can plan for those costs and upgrades so you have the least expense and it is predictable. On top of that, the following lifecycle plan will keep your support costs to a minimum so you’ll have far fewer unexpected expenses when these PCs “get old”.

The problems with ad hoc purchases

Many businesses buy new PCs and laptops as they need them. On the surface, that sounds appropriate; you’re only spending when you have to. However, there are a number of problems caused by this casual, unplanned method:

Unexpected expenditures

When you just go out and buy a new laptop because an existing one was damaged or you buy a new PC just because it wasn’t speedy enough to run the new version of MS Excel the new client requires, you are making unplanned expenditures. For most of us, especially in these tight times, making a large unplanned expenditure can be painful.

The worst case, of course is when you need to buy a new computer for real business needs, but choose not to because cash is too tight. That’s a terrible position to be in and one that can be avoided.

Unnecessary features

An insidious but costly result of ad hoc purchases is you will likely buy more features than you really need. If you suddenly need a replacement PC for the bookkeeper, you will likely go out to the store, look at prices, and choose a computer with the most features for the cheapest price. Later, when you look back you’ll likely find you bought more features than you needed.

Ever discover your HR person’s PC had a wireless mouse or keyboard that broke even though they’re never more than 2 feet from the PC? Or you bought a laptop for the salesguy with a subwoofer and a broadband card that you never paid to turn on? These are common examples of buying computers at the last minute without planning what you need and looking for matching computers.

Different brands and models

This is one you’re probably dealing with already, but haven’t realized it’s costing you money. Take a look around the office. What brands of computers do you see? Which models? Are they (mostly) all the same? If you answered “yes” then great, you’re already on your way. For the vast majority of businesses, the answer is “no” because they have twenty different kinds and models of PCs because there was no strategy for buying them.

By planning ahead and sticking to a strategy for buying PCs, you will end up with just one brand (like Dell, IBM or HP) and just one or two models within that brand. By buying all the same PC, you greatly reduce the support costs you have and the little hen-pecking of training differences each person goes through as they try to use a different model than last time and a wholly different brand than their co-worker uses.

These extra, almost-hidden costs really show up when something goes wrong and no one in the office has ever had that kind of problem on their computer so you can’t fix the issue with local knowledge. Now you have to go to a squad of geeks or the vendor and really lose time and money.

Lumpy purchasing

The worst issue with ad hoc purchasing is, of course, lumpy expenditures. When you wait until you can’t stand it any more and upgrade all the PCs at one time, you incur a huge cost in one year that you won’t see again until three or more years later… and, again, it’ll be an unplanned, large expenditure. By the very nature of the size and pain, you’ll put those off as long as possible and probably incur support and ad hoc costs again….

Instead of this lumpy, all-at-once buying, a good computer purchasing strategy sets a cycle of buying computers, say once every three years, that spreads these costs over those three years and keeps everything smooth and predictable.

Out-of-step with others

One last issue that you’ll likely recognize is the cascading upgrade. When you do have to buy one new PC and it happens to come with a new version of Windows or MS Office, you often find that one person is producing files that no one else can use. They’ve upgraded software as a result of getting a new PC, but no one else has. Suddenly your office has a mix of old and new file versions, no one can manage it well, and you often end up upgrading everyone’s software. Just because you bought one new PC.

A better way of buying computers for business

I’ve been working with large and small business I.T. departments for decades and the companies who really have a strategy for computers always seems to have the happiest, most-productive workers and who spend the least money overall. Here’s what they do:

3 year lifecycle for PCs

Buy desktop computers and laptops with an expectation to use them for just three years.
Replace one third of all your desktop and laptop computers each year.

This smooths out the costs, allows predictable expenditures, and guarantees each employee will get a new computer as the three-year-old computer reaches its end-of-reliable life.

One brand, a few models

Choose one reputable, national brand like Dell, IBM or HP and stick to just them. Call in to their small business sales department and establish a relationship. You’ll get better pricing and special deals. If you want a local firm that can provide national brands and still get great support, try GroundForce IT.

Pick one or two models, perhaps an one entry level and one more-powerful configuration, and always buy that one. You’ll satisfy the real needs of employees and keep the number of different computers and configurations to a minimum.

When you stick to just one brand and just a few models, your support and training costs go down and, if you’re like me, an unplanned emergency trip to the local computer store will not result in a paid-too-much for features-you-don’t-need scenario.

Always use manufacturer support

When you buy these business-class computers from a national brand, you definitely want the next-business-day on-your-site support contract for the three years you plan to keep the computers.

This cheap warranty means that when anything goes wrong with the hardware, you call in and can expect the machine to be repaired the very next day without having to box up and mail the crashed machine. You’ll save plenty of downtime and gain the reassurance that any problem will be fixed the next day.

National brand, local support

One more reason to only buy from known, national brands is to guarantee you’ll get service in your local area. You can certainly find lower-priced computers from off-brand vendors or local computer shops, but they don’t have hordes of computer repair people and are not a likely to remain in business as Dell, IBM or HP.

Standard applications

When you load up one of these PCs with the applications your employees need, be sure to stick to just a small number of intentionally-selected applications. Perhaps MS Office or OpenOffice and the Thunderbird email client. Only you know which applications are right for you, but once you’ve decided be sure to stick to the standards.

When you let employees just use whatever software they want to, you risk the PCs getting cluttered with many different apps that each require their own support and reduce your office’s ability to provide collaborative internal support because everyone uses the same software.

You definitely want to use all the same anti-virus, SPAM and web browsing security software. If you have more than 5 PCs, you’ll want a corporate edition or buy these utilities, as a managed service, from a reseller like Sklar Technology.

Imaging their computers

Once the PCs are delivered and you’ve got all the standard apps installed and the corporate stand for security software loaded, you want to “make an image” of this pristine machine before you give it to the users.

By running software like Norton’s Ghost, you can make a new install DVD that brings a blank PC (of the same model) up to the exact same set of OS and apps that you have right now. This means you can reload the PC in just five minutes should it become to clogged with software, catch a nasty virus, or even just load a brand-new same-model PC.

One step further: the ultimate strategy

What we’ve covered above is applicable to almost all small businesses, from two computers to a hundred. When you’ve got your basic costs controlled with this kind of strategy, you can implement a few more steps to get the most of your computers and I.T. without having to hire an I.T. department:

Managed PCs

Once you get past twenty computers, it’s almost a fulltime task keeping all the patches up to date and answering user questions about this program or that driver. You’ll certainly want to have a file server and a good backup solution. That sounds like you’re ready to hire an expensive I.T. person. Don’t.

When you need a particular kind of skill or service to do something for your business, but not to resell to your customers, you call that “not core competency” and intelligently outsource that service. Like payroll or benefits or fleet maintenance.

Unless you have hundreds of PCs, you would find better success and lower costs if you used a managed (PC) service provider (MSP) like TheHelpDeskCompany to keep your PCs running well and all your application questions answered by responsive, knowledgeable people.

Centralized security

When you get to a couple of dozen PCs, you’ll also be confronted with PC viruses and SPAM and maybe even a hacker every once in a while. Instead of trying to keep up to date on all the crazy security breaches in the world, you should leave that work up to people who do it every day.

A company that controls the anti-virus and security software on each of your PCs remotely is commonly called centralized or managed security. Sklar is a local Richmond example of a reputable, responsive firm offering this service and they have many success stories where they’ve saved a customer in just these circumstances.

Online backup

Get too far a few computers in the office and you’ll discover you need a backup strategy, too. Someone will erase something from the file server or a spilled coffee will destroy and entire hard drive full of client information that isn’t copied anywhere else.

In the old days, two years ago, you would buy a server and install a tape drive and tell the receptionist to switch the tapes each night and carry one home. Luckily there is an easier, less expensive way that guarantees you’ll never lose a file.

Many companies offer online backups which means your PCs and laptops back up their own files, but instead of writing to tape or CD, they send those backups to a secure website run by companies like Dell, Microsoft or Sklar. These backups happen all the time, they go fast when there is a high speed Internet connection, and you recover quickly when your laptop is stolen or your PC is fried by lightning.

Office printers

This last one is a pet peeve of mine. Computer printer manufacturers are making a killing these days by convincing users that everyone should have their own printer and it should be a color printer and it is cheap. When you see ads for a $80 personal color inkjet or a $200 color laser, your first thought is probably “what a deal!”

Sadly, this is not a good deal. Every time you add another printer to the office, you are adding more maintenance and support costs. Every time you buy an “inexpensive printer”, you are falling for the manufacturer’s trap of cheap printer expensive ink cartridges. If you don’t have a plan, a strategy for buying printers, you’ll likely end up with an office full of incompatible printers, each with their own drivers, each with their own set of supplies and no real way to control the expenses.

A better, cheaper, more productive plan for office printers would be to select one or two kinds of printers, locate them centrally so everyone or each group can easily reach the printers, and standardize on those printers. Choose printers that have the features you need (like color if you really need it and duplexing only if that makes sense for the majority of your printing needs) and whose toner and ink cartridges are high capacity, low cost and have 3rd party sources. That will reduce your support costs as well as your supply costs and stocking levels.

Conclusion

You can save a lot of money and heartburn by adopting a plan, a strategy for buying desktop and laptop computers. You can put ad hoc purchases behind you with a careful, measured implementation of strategy. If you really want to save money, you could apply the same technique to office printers.

Home Media makes a difference with Mac

2009-06-09T14:44:00.001-07:00

Mac users tend to be strong advocates for their "better" computers, but one innovative CEO here in Richmond has improved his customer service by just using a Macintosh.

Ray Lepper built Home Media to provide beautiful, elegant, and really fun solutions to whole house music systems and networks, the best home theater installations and top-notch service after the install. He and his staff have been using Macs at the store for years, but when Mac OS X came along with Cover Flow as part of Finder, Ray had a brilliant idea.

Custom audio visual systems put together by experts like Home Media are awesome to watch, listen and use, but the setup and maintenance can be very complicated. When you have someone like Ray design and build a system for you, they not only install and hook up the various receivers, projectors, speakers, amplifiers and players for you, they also do all the complex programming so you just get the fun, use-it part of the deal. That still leaves a daunting support issue, though, with each install being a custom creation from dozens and dozens of pieces of high tech gear.

Well, Ray and his Macintosh-powered team have come up with a great solution. Once he saw the Cover Flow motif in the Finder window on Leopard, one of the recent Mac operating system releases, he knew he could use the iPod-like document browser to quickly catalog invoices, instructions and manuals.

Each and every document related to a customer's installation is scanned to an Adobe PDF document and all the equipment and programming manuals are saved in the same format to a customer-specific folder on their network drive.

When a support call comes in or when that customer calls up to upgrade their wireless router or add a Blu-Ray DVD player, the Home Media staffer just opens the right folder and can flip through a fully-rendered, smaller version of all the documents used in that customer's house. Within seconds and without leaving their desk, Ray's team has all the information about that system and can answer questions quickly and correctly.

That means Home Media can not only design and install the best AV systems, they are also well prepared for providing the best support and in-house customer service. A great differentiator and customer benefit without spending any extra on their computers and I.T.

I've seen many a Mac user smile when they work on their computers, but Ray has figured out how to keep his customers smiling because he's using a Mac. Genius!

Plan ahead or lose your data

2009-06-03T09:25:00.001-07:00

Whether it's the CEO or an employee, when you lose your laptop or your hard drive crashes, the whole company could be at risk... if you don't plan ahead and make a backup strategy. DO something about it today and you may well save your business from disaster or a serious setback.

Buying a PC or Mac and starting to use it is easy. When you develop a spreadsheet to solve daily problems, the computer seems like it's really helping the company. When the lead salesperson uses ACT! or Outlook on their computer to regularly reach all the clients, they look great. But when the hard drive crashes and you can't get to that valuable info anywhere else or your laptop gets stolen or falls into the pool, your business may be at risk if you don't have a backup strategy and have been using it religiously.

Think about what would happen if you lost your home computer, the one with all your family pictures on it. Are there any backup copies? Or would all those valuable memories be gone? That's what it's like for so many businesses because they are too busy to install and practice using a sound backup strategy.

If you want to prevent this fomr happening, read about backup strategies in this blog entry or read the following suggestions are for those of you who have had a hard drive crash, if your harddrive isn't working well enough to boot or if you hard disk is gone because the computer or laptop it was in has been stolen:

Hard drive failure or loss

It’s often that people think their hard drive is completely “bad” because the machine won’t boot up or it locks up. There is a difference between getting a little damage on your hard drive files and the physical hardware of the harddrive being dead, even though the result to a user seems to be the same.

How do you know your harddrive is bad? If it isn’t a professional super-geek telling you the hard drive is genuinely, physically dead, then don’t let anyone mess with the hard drive until you give it to a pro. If it’s just the files on the harddrive that are a little messed up and the physical equipment is still good, a pro can likely retrieve some or all of the data using recovery programs that work even when portions of the hard drive or directories are damaged.

Recovering files and pictures from USB memory sticks

When you move files or pictures off your memory sticks onto the computer, it seems like the memory stick has been cleared. It has not. The old files are still there, but they have been hidden and they remain retrievable until you re-use the memory stick for taking new pictures or storing new files. If you clean off your memory stick often, there are likely to be old files and pictures hiding on it, you just need to check by using a recovery program. This will not get everything off, but can recover files you think are long gone.

Old computers, email client, other people’s computers

When you upgrade to a new computer, people often just leave their old computer lying around in a closet or garage or the supply room. Do you still have your old computer, the one you were using when the missing files were orginally created? Boot it back up and see if you can find some of your old files.

When you send emails with attachments or contact inforomation about someone, a copy of the outbound email (along with any attachments) is saved in your email client for some time. Check with your Sent Items folder or on your Exchange server or in your Archive folder. If you use Google Mail, HotMail, hosted Mac Mail or Exchange, its likely your email has been archived and is easily accessible online.

When people receive emails with attachments, they typical keep them for some time. Ask co-workers, vendors and customers to check their Inbox or your-company folder, their Archive Folders, and their email attachment directory. If they find copies, have them email them back to you.

Moving forward

You can use online services like the ones from Sklar, Apple, or Dell that back your PC up to a place out on the web just in case you lose your hard drive or whole laptop.

Or you could buy a small external hard drive and use the automatic backup program they come with to frequently create an at-home or at-the-office backup when you connect your laptop.

Or, even better, you could use a free program/service like Google’s Picasa to scan and upload pictures or Google's Docs to store your important documents at Google's data centers.

There is still hope

So, make sure you check with a professional before you throw away or fiddle with your crashed harddrive and make plans today so you have a backup strategy in place before a computer crash sets your company back.

Recovering your business when your laptop is lost or stolen

2009-05-01T10:17:00.000-07:00

What is on your laptop, right now, that doesn’t exist anywhere else? If someone stole it, what would you do? How would you recover and get back to business? Scot McRoberts lost everything last week and his business didn’t skip a beat thanks to an excellent backup strategy.

The Virginia Council of CEOs counts on Scot to keep their organization running smoothly and time everything perfectly. These 130 local CEOs rarely find the time to break away from running their businesses even when it means hearing the best business advice from nationally-acclaimed speakers and leaders. They count on Scot to get plan everything right and deliver exactly on time. It almost didn’t happen last week.

Keith McFarland, author of Breakthrough Company, had been selected to speak on how the best companies emerge from the entrepreneur stage and grow. Ninety of the VACEOs members were on their way to the Williamsburg Lodge for a two day retreat under the careful administration of Scot. For the next few days, his laptop would be critical during this off site, annual event. The CEOs were counting on Scot to make sure they were getting the most from the business networking and growth stage learning from the speaker. He never would have guessed fate would snatch his laptop from him at the worst possible time.

Taking a meeting in downtown Richmond, Scot parked his car and left his laptop behind. He would be back shortly and our city center is not known as a high crime zone. Imagine his dismay when he returned and found his car burglarized and his laptop gone. Not only did it contain all the information about the upcoming, once-a-year event and the VACEOs contacts and documents, but there was also some amount of sensitive information on the hard disk.

Luckily for Scot and the 120 life-long learners in the VACEOS, he had engaged Sklar Technology to manage all the I.T. for the VA Council of CEOs. Randy Sklar, the president of Sklar Technology, was happy to take on Scot as a customer, not just because the council is such a valuable resource to the local business community, but also because Randy is a member and gains so much from this CEO support organization.

When Scot called Randy to explain that his laptop had been stolen, Randy reassured him and put his technical team to work. The very next morning they were reloading the entire contents of Scot’s laptop from the most recent backup. Scot had purchased a replacement machine and within 24 hours it was loaded with all the info he needed to continue the annual VACEOs retreat without trouble. Since Sklar Technology was using an advanced backup and management product on Scot’s laptop, they were also able to dial in to it when the thieves plugged it into the Internet, grabbing the few files that were too new to be in the last backup and erasing those files with sensitive information.

So, if you're running a business and you count on computers to store important information for you, these basic steps can prevent your business from suffering after a theft, disaster or security breach:

Make sure you have a modern strategy for backing up the data on your computers. Not just your servers, but any computer or laptop or phone that has information you can’t do business without.
Train and remind your staff regularly that it is important to save business data to places that are backed up regularly and to be extra careful where they save sensitive information.
Test your backup plans twice a year. Make sure you know what steps it takes to recover from theft, disaster or crashes and prove to yourself that you are safe. It is far better to find that there is a gap in your coverage during a test than to discover you’re vulnerable after you’ve lost a server or a laptop.
If you don’t have the I.T. staff to keep up with the latest products, best practices and technologies, look for managed I.T. services who can afford to keep their staff up to date and rely on them instead. You’ll end up with more time to concentrate on your business while you rely on well-trained and well-experienced outsourced I.T. staff to concentrate on your valuable computers and data.
Don’t forget that laptops, netbooks, cellphones, iPhones, PDAs, and smartphones carry more and more data every day. You are including them, intentionally or not, in your business every time you use them, so you have to include them in your backup and security strategy, too.

Follow Doug Lucy's business strategy tips on Twitter at @DougLucy and AdLinea's search engine optimization and Internet marketing tips at @AdLinea

Managing a server critical to your business

2008-05-27T15:12:00.001-07:00

At some point, you'll end up buying or assembling a server that provides some critical service that your whole business relies on. For a retailer, the Point Of Sale system going out would mean they couldn't (easily) sell merchandise until it was fixed. For a manufacturer or distributor, the inventory and purchasing system going down means no one can record what they are doing. For a payroll company, when the server running the payroll and accounting software fails, they can't calculate or write checks. Similarly, the media or file server for an advertising or architecture firm has to be up and running or their staff can't _do_ anything for their customers.

All of these scenarios point out how important this server is to your business. You may not
plan it that way, you may find one particular server grows into a critical role, or you might intentionally load a server with mission-critical software, but the one common thing to remember is you must protect your critical server(s).

Just like a car, these servers require regular maintenance to continue running reliably, they require insurance to cover the times when they crash or fail, and you have to build up a plan for continuing to do business even when the server fails.

Here at Allegro Consultants, we provide hosting, monitoring and maintenance for companies who have mission critical servers, but don't want the costs of a full IT staff to maintain them. Here is a short list of what should be done for these important servers, whether YOU do it or whether you have a professional support firm like us do it for you:

Firewalls
Your mission-critical server should be protected from outside attacks by a perimeter firewall. This is a firewall between your internal company network and the company (ISP) who provides your connectivity to the Internet. This is a very basic kind of protection.

This server should also be protected from internal attacks, those coming from a PC or server inside your company, so it can survive an attack even after one of your other internal machines is hacked into.

Power
You need to keep the mission-critical servers running even when power goes out. Many offices have some kind of generator that kicks in after a minute or so of powerloss. While it's good to have a generator, that minute of powerloss before it kicks in will crash your server.

You'll need a good UPS, uninterupptable power supply, connected to the server to keep it running until the generator has a chance to start providing power. UPSes also condition the incoming electricity so spikes, brownouts and switchovers don't hurt the server.

Spikes and surges
Each device connected to the server: the power line, the network cables, the phone line for the fax or modem, the serial cables to dumb terminals or old printers, etc., all can be the path that a electrical surge or spike uses to reach your precious server.

Each of these lines must have a surge suppressor that shunts the spike of voltage to ground. To make this work you must use three prong plugs every where. Never use a two-prong to three-prong connector. That eliminates the "safety valve" a surge suppressor needs to protect your equipment.

Hacks and viruses
You will need to protect your server from viruses, hackers and disgruntled employees. You'll need a server-level anti-virus system, an intrusion detection system that watches for and notifies you if someone tries to break in, and some kind of VPN so people outside your office who are allowed to use this server can't have their communication "snooped" by people watching their connection.

Patches
The operating system, each application you run on the server, and every add-on (like anti virus software) will have patches come out to close off security holes and add new features from the day you install it to the last day you use the software.

Applying these patches can be good, sometimes, and can be bad, other times. You'll need a an automated tool to tell you when important patches are available and a strategy to tell you if you want to apply those patches.

For many mission-critical servers, you only apply security patches and save all new-feature-only patches for planned downtime weekends. It's counterproductive to apply a new-feature patch to a working server only to have that patch crash the server and halt production.

Backups
You should have nightly backups, held offsite, and you should try to provide some kind of regular, frequent transaction backups during the working day. In the Progress, Oracle, and MS-SQL worlds, these are called “roll forward logs”. When you institute roll forward logging and transfer those logs, every 15 minutes or so, off site, they can be combined with your last full backup to provide for very, very little loss of data even under the worst disaster.

Your backups and roll forward procedures and validity should be tested twice a year.

A virtual image of the server, a cold metal backup plus exact hardware, or careful exact steps and media needed to perform a cold recovery should be held somewhere geographically separate form your primary server. You should create and test a DR (disaster recovery) plan once a year and “operate” that equipment to prove it worked.

Physical server management
All enterprise-class x86 servers from “name brands” such as Dell, IBM and HP come with management software. Once installed and configured, this software watches the physical hardware and alerts someone via SMS text messaging or email that a problem is about to occur or has occurred.

For all mission-critical server, you should use name-brand, enterprise-class servers and install the comes-with-it server management software. This may seem like more cost that the whitebox you can buy cheaper from the PC shop around the corner, but that won't help you when it's 3 AM on a holiday the day before all your payroll clients expect checks and your server has crashed with no more explanation than a blinking red light on the faceplate.

Remote control
All enterprise-class server have an option for out-of-band server management. This is typically a piece of hardware or an add-in card that allows you to diagnosis, reboot and “watch the console” even when the machine is not powered or not fully booted yet. For servers that are not 100% off-the-shelf proven designs (hardware, OS and application) and are hidden away in a lights out data center, these remote management cards can mean the difference between 15 minute recovery and 4 hour recovery.

Hardware warranties and support
You should leverage the hardware warranties and support plans available when you purchase these servers. The 24x7 4 hr onsite hardware diagnosis and repair is a very cheap insurance policy that no one but the vendor can supply as well as they do or within the warranty terms.

Server lifespan
You should expect a lifespan of each x86 server you buy to be only as long as the original manufacturer’s warranty. If Dell only offers 5 years of protection, plan to replace that server with a new one, under a new warranty, before that 5 years runs out.

Local monitoring
You should also install OS-level monitoring that proactively watches for problems and alerts you before they occur. We use Nagios for customers who buy monitoring from us and it warns us about low disk space, too much use of a CPU, running out of memory, network cards starting to fail, etc. Our Nagios management server, once it gets those “cries for help” or “warnings”, sends us SMS text messages and we ask you what you’d like to do. This usually happens early enough that maintenance to correct the problem can happen well in advance of any failure and with planned downtime.

Remote monitoring
Lastly, you want some simple checking, from the outside world, that the server is still accessible. This is a server we can offer and it uses various mechanisms to verify the server is still reachable. This detects problems like the network has gone down, the firewall has stopped allowing packets through, you software has stopped running, etc.

So, there's a lot to know about "running" a critical server. Bigger companies have dedicated IT staff who are trained and experienced in these areas. You simply count on them to provide steady, reliable service of the applications and they run the servers.

When it's just YOU as the Chief Everything Officer, you may find all the above too much to handle. But someone has to handle it as your business relies, literally, in this server working properly.

You can call a managed service provider like Allegro Consultants and have them do all this for you, or you can follow the recommendations above and do most of it on your own.

Keeping track of problems

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If you have users, then you've got a stack of problems. Every time you give an employee a computer, an application or even just a way to accomplish something, you'll end up with the need to support that employee. When they encounter a problem, like a stuck printer or a lost password, you'll get called and be expected to fix something.

You'll need something that helps you accomplish this task, especially if, like most small business I.T. shops, computer support isn't you're primary job. To manage this extra duty, do a good job of it, and not let it consume every waking hour, you need:

A way for users to ask you to fix a problem that doesn't require you, personally, to write down the problem
A mechanism for listing the outstanding problems and prioritizing them
Some kind of report that shows a user the status of their problem
A way to allocate budget dollars to solving problems or at least reporting how your I.T. money was spent

These are the basics that will keep you sane as well as demonstrate to the users you are indeed working on their problem. This is a very standard I.T. problem, one that all businesses have, and one that many, many companies have created solutions for.

So, how do you do this and how do you get them to use it?

The solution you're looking for is often called a "trouble ticket" system or a "help desk" system. There are lots of them. Fundamentally, such systems allow a user to submit a new problem or "ticket", the ticket is assigned to an I.T. queue, someone in I.T. gets notified there is a new issue, they work on the issue, and, once it is complete, the trouble ticket system lets the original user know it has been fixed.

While you may think this is extra work, I can tell you from experience that such systems dramatically reduce the amount of time and headache answering incoming support calls require. Entry of the original problem is performed by the user with the problem. That cuts down your time and improves the accuracy of the description. When that user wants to know the status of their issue, they look it up in the trouble ticket system instead of calling you. Again, a big time and headache saver.

Even more substantial time savings can be had once you have used the system for some time and have accumulated lots of problem-and-its-resolution data within the system. With proper handling, each issue that is entered and resolved can be searched by users before they enter a new issue to see if their problem has been solved in the past. If it hasn't and they enter a new ticket anyway, your ability to search the past problems for related issues or knowledgeable people regarding the affected systems is a big time savings.

Overall, a trouble ticket system is a critical tool for providing good support to the users, timely resolution of business issues, and reduces the time and cost you have to expend to solve those problems.

Open Source trouble ticket systems:

OTRS - Open Ticket Request System www.otrs.org
Web Amoeba Ticket System (for Mambo and Joomla CMSes) www.webamoeba.co.uk
Simple Ticket - www.simpleticket.net

If you are running Progress OpenEdge or WebSpeed, you should know that Allegro Consultants offers a free copy of their Progress-based trouble ticket system to customers for free. www.allegroconsultants.com

So, now you ARE IT; Now what?

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For most small businesses, having a full time I.T. "department" isn't practical, but that doesn't stop you from needing real I.T. knowledge, experience and resources to meet the needs of a growing business, the challenges of staying under a budget and resolving the show-stopping problems that always crop up.

This blog will address the most common issues and give you some insight into how the "big boys" solve these problems as well as some tips and tricks from the field to let you look like a genius, maybe even a SOOPER genius.