Dec
22

End of Year IT Checklist

 

As we finish out the year and start planning for 2012, it may make sense to take a look at the status of your IT network.  We’ve put together a checklist of questions to ask so that you can prepare your company, and your budget, for next year.

Servers

  • How old are your servers? If they are older than 4 years old you may want to start planning to replace them.
  • Are your servers under warranty?  See when your warranty expires.  Often you can renew the warranty for an additional couple of years after the initial warranty expires, so you may want to consider that when budgeting for 2012.
  • What Operating System are your servers running on? Windows 2003 is a bit antiquated and Microsoft has added a lot of new features that might benefit your organization.
  • Are you using virtual servers? Or is each server running on its own hardware?  Virtual servers allow you get a lot more out of your hardware.
  • What is your server to computer ratio?  There is no strict rule for what is a good server to computer ratio, but do the calculation, you might be surprised.

Security

  • Is your antivirus up to date on both your computers and your servers?  This process can be automated, so there’s no excuse for not having antivirus on all your hardware.
  • Are your updates and patches up to date on your servers? This process can also be automated.
  • Are you allowing remote access to your network? Is it secure enough?

Computers

  • How old are your computers?  If a lot of them are over three years old, you may want to start planning for replacements.  You may also want to purchase a spare computer you can have configured and ready to go in case an older computer breaks.
  • What operating systems are they running? Would you like to standardize to one operating system?

Data Backup

  • Are you backing up everything regularly? Or just the critical data? If you’re not backing up the entire system, are you okay with the downtime that would come with having to reconfigure?
  • Is your data being backed up offsite?  How much of it?
  • Is the backup automatic, or does somebody have to put in a tape (or a hard drive)?
  • Do you have a disaster plan?  Do you know how much downtime you might experience if something happens to your servers?

End of Year Reports

  • Monitoring –If you have monitoring software on your network you can look at your system’s performance over the course of the year.  Perhaps there are trends, or you need to upgrade some hardware next year to deal with the load.
  • IT Staff – Is your IT staff (or IT company) meeting their service level goals? How long is it taking them to solve your problems, are there areas for improvement?

What new technology would you like to implement next year?

  • Have you been considering implementing some new software?  Or perhaps changing software?
  • Do you want to consider cloud computing options?  If you are thinking of replacing a server, it might be the right time to look at your cloud options.

Want a more in-depth assessment?  Call us at 888-883-2463.

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