Proactive Monitoring: Fixing Small Problems Before they Become Big Ones
When talking about disaster recovery often times we start by thinking of large scale disasters such as fire, flood or other traumatic events. The reality is that these events are far and few between. Depending on your location most experts estimate about a 1% chance of an event like this happening. The more probable scenario is a localized disaster. More everyday disaster scenarios are things like hard drives failing, data getting deleted and virus attacks. When an incident such as this happens it can mean lost productivity and typically an expensive repair bill.
Proactive monitoring is a tool that large enterprises have used for years. If you remember seeing scenes from NASA mission control you would get the idea. Large screens send blinking red messages when something goes wrong. With the advent of the Internet and advances in software, small businesses can now have the same type of monitoring from a local or national service provider. Typically these service providers install a piece of software on one server in the environment. They then configure the software to search and monitor different devices on the network. The software can not only monitor devices such as servers and workstations, but firewalls and other networking equipment as well. From the service provider viewpoint they see a dashboard of all their clients and a big red X on anything that is wrong to alert them that they need to take the proper action.
An example may illustrate why a service like this would be useful. A server's C:\ drive may be starting to run low, and alert gets sent when it has only 10% capacity left. The service provider notices and can perform cleanup or move files around. If this problem went unchecked the only way someone may know is if the server stopped functioning. Then the problem is difficult to fix and usually happens at the most inconvenient time.
Instead of using a service you could also check some of these items manually. Some of the major items to check for include:
- Making sure your backup is current and possibly performing a test restore
- Checking that you have the latest Anti-Virus and Windows Updates
- Adequate disk space is present on your server
- Check the event log to see if any applications are sending specific errors that should be addressed
If you are going to check items manually it might be a good idea to put the task on your calendar to ensure that you actually perform the task on a regular basis.
