Avoid an Expensive Meltdown

Some technology, even if it is not expensive or difficult to implement, can make a big difference to your organization.  This column highlights selected products and tools that we have found helpful in our experience at our company and with our clients.

Servers can fail for many reasons, some of them quite mundane.  What would happen to your organization if you lost power or air conditioning over the weekend in your server room? Would your network managers find out soon enough to take corrective action?

To address this challenge and help our network managers sleep better at night, Infostrat implemented an inexpensive sensor for the server room that may be monitored remotely using a web browser on a computer or a cell phone.  

We chose the Digi International Watchport for about $175.  This device attaches to the network and is accessible via your web browser.  It updates readings every two minutes and shows the current temperature and humidity. You can configure the device to send alerts as emails or pages when thresholds are reached.

Our network managers access the temperature readings and other key server performance metrics using their SmartPhones and PocketPCs.  This way they can respond quickly and fix problems even on weekends before users find out there is a problem.

For a small investment in hardware you can avoid expensive downtime and potential loss of data that could take days of recovery time.  

Contact us if you would like to learn more about how we can help with your server operations.

InfoStrat consultants hold 80 certifications in Microsoft products and technologies, including Microsoft Certified Systems Engineers (MCSE) and Microsoft Certified Solution Developers (MCSD). As a Microsoft Gold Partner, InfoStrat has earned eight competencies.

Ever wonder about that paintbrush icon in the Word toolbar?  Turns out it can be one of the biggest timesavers once you learn how to use it.  First, select an area with desired formatting such as fonts and styles.  Next, click the Format Painter.  The mouse pointer changes to a paintbrush.  Select the target area and your formatting will be applied to the target area.  If you double-click the Format Painter, your selection will remain so you apply it to more than one target.