Secure and Compliant

Backing up your data is the single most important thing you can do to protect your data. Our Offsite Backup Service protects your data by backing it up securely through the internet each night, storing it offsite in a protected, HIPAA Compliant, environment.

Fully Managed

Unlike other services where you have to manage your backup manually, we manage every aspect of your backup for you. This managed approach allows you to focus on your business, not your backup. We actively monitor and manage the entire backup service to make sure your data is protected and your backups are working correctly.

Flexible with Room to Grow

From simple data backups to full virtual server backups with offsite restore options, we have the technology to fit your needs. With our remote restore option, we can restore a failed server to another location providing a virtualized disaster recovery and minimizing downtime. We can also host virtual machine backups and replicas allowing us to facilitate your disaster recovery plan.

Computer Hardware Won’t Last Forever

Aside from electrical components being prone to failure at any time from power problems and static, there are mechanical components that wear out too.

Hard drives spin and a high rate of speed and some machines especially servers are left on 100% of the time spinning 24 hour a day. Hard drive failure is not an “if” it’s a “when”.

Computing Power Increases But So Do The Software Requirements

Moore’s Law says that computing speeds double every 2 years or so and that may lead you to believe that new computers should run twice as fast but there are other factors to consider. Software manufactures take advantage of that speed to improve their software’s functionality and feature list eating up that increased speed. Getting new software and especially new operating systems and trying to run then on older equipment often has disappointing results.

When To Replace PCs

Because of the quick availability of replacement computers and that in most networks all the data resides on the server, we do not have a solid recommendation on when to replace PCs. We do however see PCs replaced on average between the 3^rd and 5^th year of use and more often than not, they are replaced due to slow performance or lack of computing power for new software. Keep in mind that if all your data is not on the server or backed up, it should be and you may also want to replace your PC proactively rather than wait for a failure which can be harder to retrieve and transfer setting from.

Don’t Wait On The Server Upgrade

Servers are often overlooked, especially servers that perform properly (the ones maintained by C-Net Systems), but that is a bad thing to overlook. Servers house all the data and enable end users to work and be productive as well as correspond with customers (when a server goes down email often goes with it). Server hard drives are also spinning away 100% of the time counting down to their eminent failure. Servers are not inexpensive but ignoring them can be much more costly. Aside from the downtime of the network and possible data loss, a server recovery is always more expensive than a planned server replacement or server upgrade. Aside from the cost of the equipment, labor and recovery, a business’s downtime needs to be factored in.

We recommend replacing servers between the 3^rd and 4^th year of service. All our servers have a 3 year warranty which is great during the warranty period but after that it become increasingly difficult to find identical replacement parts if something were to fail. Because of the complicated nature of the equipment and its interaction with the operating system it is often difficult to recover a server to different hardware, even from backups, in a disaster scenario. Data recovery is also a lot more time and labor intensive compared to a migration or upgrade often doubling the cost of labor. Proactive, planed server migrations and upgrades are easily done when properly thought out. The vast majority of our server upgrades and migrations take place over weekends and in most cases are virtually transparent to the end user aside from an improvement in performance.

Re-Tasking And Rotation

Sometimes the PC that needs to be replaced is not the one that need to most power. We often bring new computers in and give them to users that require more performance, rotating their old computers down to the PC needing replacement. Failed computers at a station that does not require a lot of performance can be turned into an upgrade for someone who needs it rather than be underutilized at a station that does not need the power.

We also try to utilize old servers as backup servers or turn them into Terminal Servers for occasional users. Just because we do not want to keep our mission critical data on them does not mean their useful life is over. Often an old server can provide a useful service that may not have been in the budget had a new server been required. When re-tasking old servers be sure to utilize them in a function that can be easily recovered and never put any mission critical data or applications on them.

There are options available for small businesses that run on Microsoft Server products to run their network. A network does not need to be completely reconfigured to replace a  Server. Microsoft Small Business Servers can be replaced seamlessly without having to  ever touch any PC on your network if you take a thought out approach which will save you money.

Motherboards, Hard Drives and Memory modules still fail. The equipment you use to run your business does not seem to care that the money to replace it may be in short supply. Even in a slow economy servers and computers still need to be replaced.

Servers are at the center of any computer network and if one fails everyone on the network suffers. When one computer on a network fails that user down, when a server dies everyone is down. That is why you need to pay attention to that box that sits in the server room.

Replacing your businesses server after a failure is always more expensive than a planned replacement and it’s not only the data that is important. A non booting Server will need to be recovered to recover all the connections it has with the other computers connected to the network or you will be forced to redo the network and all its connections from scratch. Recovering the information is actually a simpler process.

To get an idea of what is involved you have to know what your domain does for you. All recent versions  of Microsoft Server products utilize Active Directory to maintain the security between users, computers and servers and their interaction with each other. Active Directory is a complicated structure and is not easily restored after a catastrophic malfunction. The difficulty in recovering Active Directory is what increases the cost. Either you have to spend time recovering Active Directory or you have to start from the beginning and spend time rejoining each computer on the network to the new Active Directory Domain.

Servers generate a lot of heat and since they are often neglected in the closet this increased heat and friction helps to decrease their useful lives.Small business servers run on hardware that degrades and will fail over time. The most common point of failure is with the Hard Drives. Hard Drives are continually spinning and with a server running operating 24/7 their clocks are always ticking.

Server Hard Drives should always be configured in some sort type of RAID to help protect you from data loss in case of a failure. Server Hard Drives should also be designed for use in a server and have a higher MTBF to safeguard your data. If your server is built with workstation drives or does not have some sort of RAID configuration you are already in danger.

We recommend upgrading servers sometime soon after the third year. Servers typically have 3 year warranties and after 3 years, any replacement hardware needed for repairs becomes more difficult to get. After the third year the odds of hardware failing increases substantially.

The time and effort in upgrading your network server can be greatly reduced if it is done before it fails. A properly planned replacement can be done over a weekend with no downtime to the users.

Even a Small Business Server with Exchange has options for a smooth transition to new hardware. Microsoft Small Business Server has the limitation of only allowing one Small Business Server on a network at a time which makes it impossible to do a direct migration from old server to new server which means that you will need to join all the workstations to the new Domain and Active Directory. There are options available that allow a swap of the server without having to ever touch a workstation.

The process we use allows you to upgrade a server without ever having to logon to a client PC. The typical process is to start the process on a Friday night and finish up sometime on Sunday and when users come in and login Monday morning nothing has changed from their perspective other than noticing a performance improvement. All the network shares are the same, the server name is the same and even Microsoft Exchange functions exactly the same as it did before the upgrade.

The process saves time and money by removing the need to change anything on the PCs. The PCs see no change in the server or its settings.

Because of the benefit of not having to train users and not spending the time going to all the PCs you save a huge expense. Depending on the licensing of the OS you could also use the same software on the new server and save that expense too. It is not a requirement to get the latest version to run on the new server and if money is tight it is a viable option to reuse the software to save money.

Having time to make an informed decision and making that decision before it is too late is the best way to plan for your technology needs now and in the future.