As business becomes more reliant on information technology and the internet, there becomes a need to ensure that not only are systems operational but that they are effective in providing a genuine support to the true goals of the business. For most businesses, their IT infrastructure is not the key to success but rather a tool with which to optimise the performance of aspects of the business process.

Outages/failures of IT systems can be expensive to a business due to their flow on effect to other operations. As the level of dependency on technology varies greatly from business to business, each business case needs to be assessed independently with regard to their individual and specific needs from a support and maintenance perspective as well as for their technology planning and strategy.

One thing is for certain ... when it comes to the potential loss of productivity due to systems failures, prevention is better than cure ... Prior planning, monitoring and regular servicing/maintenance provides for greater stability and superior performance.

Ambient IT recommends that your business enter into an ongoing preventative maintenance agreement to help reduce technical issues affecting your operation and ensure the ongoing performance of your IT infrastructure.

Don't leave it to chance ... Make sure your systems will continue to do their best for you !

Preventative Maintenance Tasks

Tasks performed as part of a Preventative Maintenance Plan are aimed at early diagnosis of potential failures, performance issues and security risks. Early detection enables pro-active rectification before issues cause interruption and cost to your business. As each organisation differs in their infrastructure, processes and level of dependency on their systems, Ambient IT develops site specific agreements based upon the needs of each client. The following information provides some general guidelines for the types of activities that may occur in your organisation:

Servers Security and Virus Protection Server and service availability monitoring Check / Update Virus definitions & security alerts Apply service packs and security patches Check Virus logs and quarantines Check RAID array / hard drive management systems Check firewall log files Check system, application, security and other event logs Check firewall software / hardware configuration Check available hard disk space Check for Internet browser and program security updates Check backups / Perform Test Recoveries Email and file archiving Network Check file systems and applications security Check firewall / router uptime and access logs Check Switches for high utilization& data collisions Email and Internet Check load balancing Check administrator mail box and address any issues Check DNS resolution Check Postmaster Mailbox & forward undeliverable emails Check WINS server database consistency & name resolution Check mail queues and queuing times for bottlenecks Check DHCP database consistency Check fax server queues Monitor DSL outage advices Check remote access service and connection times Check / Change wireless access security / passwords Check Internet connections and connected times Check Internet data downloads (by user if applicable) Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) Check and test Internet access restrictions Test UPS, check configuration and uptime / shutdown timings Check email policy, usage and quarantine settings Check battery life and condition Delete temporary internet files on server & workstations Check power fault detection Check SPAM protection, grey lists, quarantines Workstations Users and Groups Check Free Hard disk space / Delete temporary files Maintain user profiles and user permission groups Delete temporary files Manage mail boxes, email aliases, and distribution groups Check Virus Protection status Check drive mapping and file storage Run a virus scans of hard drives Check for program updates / patches General Check Hard Disk Drive for Errors Health checks for all equipment types Defragment Hard Drive(s) Incident reporting for all equipment types Asset management / warranty details / record keeping Other Activities as Required