Happy New Year
Now We Are Back at Work
Now most of us are back at work and a new year of opportunity stretches before us. This newsletter is about some of the things you might do to look after your IT assets to promote a reliable and productive environment for the duration.
Your Servers
There is a number of fairly simple things you can do to help your file server(s) get through the next 12 months. Here is a short list:
? Get the office vacuum cleaner out of mothballs, or bring in the monster from home, and clean out all the filters and airways using a medium suctions. Turn off the server first and remove the power cable. Remove the covers and suck the insides cleanish. Pay particular attention to the area around the power supply, the bit with the fan blowing out the back of the case and a whole lot of coloured wires emerging from it into the inside of the case. Remove and clean any filters over air inlets. Done.
? Before you replace the covers on the server, start it up and check that all the visible fans are working as you might expect. This is a visual check only. If you are in doubt, get someone to check them for you. They are usually pretty easy to replace, but the damage that might be caused by overheating can be much more expensive to rectify.
? Run a cleaning tape through your backup drive. This should be done every couple of weeks in a normal environment, but many of us overlook this routine item of basic maintenance.
? Replace your old backup tapes. It is generally considered that the life of a cartridge tape is around 18 months if used in a rotation of each five working days. Make your calculation based on approximately 80 write processes. Of course, you may press the envelope, but the cost of not being able to restore data needs to be measured against the saving made by not buying replacement tapes.
? Pay a little attention to your printers. Laser toner is quite abrasive and needs to be kept out of wearing surfaces. Part of a normal maintenance programme for laser printers is to remove the waste toner and lubricate the necessary components. For inkjets, there is little you need to do except to smear a very little light machine oil on the print head slide rail with a tissue.
? Check that you have adequate capacity left on your hard disk drive(s). Note the amount of space somewhere where you can find it next year. This will enable you to check on your annual increase in demand for server storage capacity and plan for any necessary upgrades.
Your Workstations
The beginning of the year is a great time to check out some basics on your workstations as well.
? Review your application license counts and increase them as required. Make sure you include your Office application, your anti virus, your network user licenses and all your licensed software.
? Clean out the fans and filters on each workstation to keep them cool over the next few, warmer months. Again, pay particular attention to the fan and internal vents on the power supply.
? Check the spare capacity on the machine’s hard disk for the same reason you have checked the spare capacity on the server.
? Check that your applications are saving to the file server by default, or you may run the risk of losing data if a workstation were to fail. Also this can save your staff the unnecessary steps involved in selecting the default open and save location each time an application is used. If you don’t know how to set these, either read the application’s help files or call your IT Administrator and ask.
? Note the specifications of the machines, if not already recorded, in your asset register. Most modern software requires 256Mb RAM and a Pentium 3 processor. If you find machines with less than this, check the system requirements for the software they are using so you can begin to plan a replacement programme.
? Check your anti virus is up to date and being adequately maintained.
? Check your screens. A poor screen could be costing you wasted staff time and effort. New screens have dropped in price remarkably over the last twelve months and should be less of a barrier to purchase in 2005
Your Other IT Infrastructure
Have a quick reconnoitre of your other IT assets.
? Check your available plugs on your network hub or switch. If you are still using a hub, consider its replacement to speed your network traffic.
? In what state is your Internet connection? Is your firewall security up to the latest, prudent level?
? Do you need to look at wireless or other new technology?
? Are PDAs and the like being adequately secured? Is the data they contain being replicated to the business’ central data store?
These are all worth a look.
Back Numbers
We have published a number of our old Newsletters to the Internet on our Web page. These may be found at www.tripos.com.au under the Newsletter tab. If you wish a hardcopy, please contact us and we will send it to you.
Here is the list of subjects covered in the last 12 months.
Newsletters (cont)
January 2004 Laptop Security
February 2004 Windows Security
March 2004 Electronic Document Management
April 2004 Broadband and Friends
May 2004 Choice of Network Operating System
June 2004 Managing and Avoiding Spam E-mails
July 2004 Document Creation
August 2004 Smarter Word Processing
September 2004 Not published
October 2004 Wireless Networking
November 2004 PC Security #1
December 2004 Happy Christmas
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Thank you.
Stewart Rankin Pty Ltd – ACN 007 972 901 & DL & LD Greenhough trading as
TRIPOS IT
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