by Darragh | May 29, 2019 | Business, Disaster recovery, Firewalls, Linux, Monitoring, Regular checks, Security, System administration, Uncategorized, Web, Windows |
If a tree falls in an empty forest, does anyone hear it? IF a server falls at 3am, will your users notice when they start work that day? Computer Support Service would like the answer to this to be no. Implementing a monitoring system is simple. However, designing a monitoring and management solution is more complex. Computer Support Services have managed, monitored and maintained environments as small as three servers to large environments with over 3000 separate endpoints including workstations and servers. We know that down time of servers and workstations can mean a loss of productivity, embarrassment when deadlines are missed and ultimately damage to your bottom line. We take a user centric approach to monitoring. Here are just some of the questions we ask. What is the impact to users if a service is unavailable. What servers, networks, storage and processes are required for each service. What are the errors or warnings that a service might present before a problem affects users? What errors or warnings will it present when the service is unavailable? Who is responsible for each component that is required for the availability of the service. Who needs to be informed when a component required to provide a service is unavailable, over utilized or encountering unexpected errors. Based on these questions we define the following...
by Darragh | Aug 22, 2015 | At home, Business, Firewalls, Uncategorized, Web |
Configuring a modem that Eircom haven’t supplied to work with your EFibre connection isn’t actually that difficult but if you look at the Eircom website or you talk to their support team you will only find the settings for the ADSL connection. The reason that I needed to configure a new modem for an Eircom EFibre connection is the Eircom FT2000 router that the supplied to one of our customers has a defect. The bridging mode does not work. It should disable the NAT, DHCP, wireless, firewall and VOIP features of the modem. When you enable bridge mode by going to Internet>VDSL>Edit and change the connection type to Bridging, some of the options on the page such as NAT become disabled however when you save your settings you will still be natted, DHCP is still enabled and so too are all the other features that should be disabled once bridging is enabled. In my opinion this was disabled or broken intentionally. My investigation shows that in the past few months a lot of users of bridging functionality have encountered serious bugs such as a rebooting loop and bridging being disabled after power is disconnected from the device. My personal experience is that ISP’s don’t want you to use bridging so it wouldn’t surprise me if this was a very low priority bug to fix. The problem is, I have spent at least six hours working on the bridging problem and a further eight hours working on trying to source, collect, install and configure a replacement router. All while a busy office has no Internet connection. So if you have...
by Darragh | May 4, 2014 | Firewalls, Linux, Mail, Monitoring, Regular checks, Security, System administration, Web, Windows |
While administering any computer system there are a number of checks that are needed to ensure all systems are functioning correctly. Depending on the size of the system, you may be required to perform these checks a number of times or just once a week. It’s usually a good idea to have some kind of checklist that you can tick off to show that you’ve completed these tests so that if a problem emerges, you can show with your logging that problems started after a specific date or time. Here are a number of the checks I run on systems. I have broken them into monthly, weekly and daily. Monthly checks Clean server room and coms room. Remove dust build up from server casing. Check air conditioning fans and vents. Check room security. Check Active Directory for old or unused computer or user accounts. Ensure all updates are downloading to Windows Server Update Services. Clean up Windows Server Update Services. Apply Updates from the previous month to Servers. Note, if there are hundreds of servers this would be a weekly task. Run a test restore from a random backup job. If there are clustered systems for redundancy, check a random service to ensure it fails over correctly. Weekly checks Check temperature of server rooms. Do a visual inspection of all servers. Distribute updates to workstations. Check server logs for errors. Check priority workstations for errors. Check that all anti-virus and other software is up to date. Check Anti-Virus logs for outbreaks or irremovable infections. Check logs from CCTV and door access systems to ensure there are no issues. On...
