Over the last 10 years I have personally visited, reviewed and made proposals on 300-400 small business computer networks throughout the Chicago area. Over time I have realized there are 3 things that tell me all I need to know about a computer network I’m looking at. If all 3 things are in place, the computer network is in great shape. If all 3 of these things are missing, the computer network has been built by someone who didn’t know what they were doing, and completely neglected by the business owner.
#1: Backups – far and away the most important thing an IT consultant does when setting up your computer network is make sure your data is safe. Hardware can always be replaced, software can always be reloaded, but losing 6+ months of data is disastrous. I would say roughly 10% of the computer networks I visit for the first time don’t even have proper backups running. I have seen cases were the backup software was never installed, or the backup software simply stopped running, and the owner was not even paying attention. Nothing scares me more the thought of data loss. If a company has backup software, and backups running daily, we are usually off to a great start.
#2: Disk Fault Tolerance – one of the easiest ways to protect your investment in a server is to make sure that if a hard drive fails on your server, that your server keeps running. A simple way to handle this is to setup ”disk mirroring” where the primary hard drive on your server has a second hard drive that is its mirror copy. Anything that gets written to the primary drive, gets written to the mirror drive. Anything that gets deleted from the primary drive gets deleted from the mirror drive. I would say 20% of the servers I review don’t even have this simple and cheap system configured on their servers. If you don’t have disk mirroring setup and your primary drive fails, you lose your server. Your server has to have the hard drive replaced, then the operating system reloaded, reconfigured and all the client computers reconnected, all the business applications reloaded, and man you better prey your backups were good. If your backups are not good, you will be starting your system from scratch. A simple disk mirroring system adds another $100 to the cost of a server and takes 15 minutes to configure.
#3: Uninterrupted Power Supply (UPS) – 30% of the servers I visit for the first time don’t have a backup power source should the building power fail. The whole point of a uninterrupted power supply is to prevent crashing the server and risking corrupting important operating system files on your server which could make your server impossible to restart, or even worse, cause you to lose a lot of your company’s data. A good power supply is $300-$500, and takes 30 minutes to configure. There should be a special cable between the power supply and the server and special software installed on the server so the UPS can notify the server when it is low on battery life and then the server will gently shut itself down avoiding any damage to files on the server.
A good IT consultant should be able to look at your computer network and network server within 15 and determine the status of your system. An IT consultant should zero right in on the things I have mentioned above because if they are in place, your data will be safe and your network will be stable. If these things are not in place, there are probably quite a few more problems “under the hood” and should be delt with promptly.
-Wayne Chapin
(Wayne Chapin is the president and founding partner of Xerillion Corp. (www.xerillion.com), a small business IT support and service company servicing the Chicago metro area.)
