We were recently contracted by an architecture firm to restore their server after its Exchange database and Active Directory became corrupted. After looking over their bill (almost $4,000) I thought I would share with you the 2 critical mistakes that lead to their server outage, contributed to this company’s downtime (two days) and, ultimately, this unnecessary cost. Imagine being without your email, schedule, and critical files for two whole days!
1. Your Server Needs Correctly Configured Battery Backup. The corruption was caused when the server was not properly shutdown during a power outage. A simple uninterruptable power supply (UPS) configured to shut the server down would have prevented this entire issue. We often find that small businesses don’t invest in these devices or don’t set them up to shutdown the actual server. Most people think of their UPS as a battery to just keep their server running when the power goes out, but the issue is what happens when the battery runs out of juice. One of the major purposes of the device is to keep your server from an abrupt loss of power during a disk write, which causes data corruption like this in the first place.
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On Tuesday night the Dynamic Edge team took a break from server administration, computer support, and programming to get back to the basics. In this case, I am talking about the game we all spent our lunches and bus rides playing: Euchre. The competition was cut throat as there were prizes for first and last place.
As you can see from one of my many awesome hands, Bruce didn’t take first place at this year’s Euchre tournament. Jason Tomsic received the $50 Best Buy gift certificate for first place…and…ummm…yeah…Skyler Willett took home the $5 McDonalds bucks for last place.
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WARNING: You could be making these Summertime Slip-Ups with your company’s server! (AND DATA!)
Excess heat is a huge problem for all of the equipment in your server room; it is even bad for laptops and Desktops. If proper attention isn’t given to your server and network equipment during the summer, all the heat outside can cause serious damage to your server, frying your system- literally!
Here are few steps you can take to insure that your server equipment and network don’t overheat this summer:
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It’s Friday afternoon and many of us are working past the 5:00 bell here at Dynamic Edge. The cleaning people are here vacuuming (they are trying to get done early to go enjoy their weekends), while we are trying to tie everything up so our customers can continue to work through their weekends. Hmm, maybe we all chose in the wrong professions, I think to myself as the vacuum buzzes by.
Here are a couple of highlights from the week:
1. We just finished the second phase to some updates to the Jiffy website: www.jiffymix.com – corn muffin mix anyone? Keep an eye out for a new Jiffy forum.
2. A new version of Datacus was just released: www.datacus.net – for all you people who are tired of entering the same data over and over. (I guess that would be every small business on the planet)
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One of my customers just told us on a recent follow up call that our Fixed IT program is really expensive. Nervous that I was about to be told: “So therefore we are going to cancel our subscription.” I took a deep breath and asked why he thought this. The customer responded, “Look, I am not complaining! When jumping out of a plane, I don’t buy the cheapest parachute I can find, I buy the best one money can buy. You folks are like a good parachute; I wouldn’t want to run my business without you.” It sounds like he is going to be renewing his contract next year. Woohoo!
So you can type 110 words per minute. Awesome. Can’t we all? But every time you touch that furry little mouse (yeah, I got a leopard print mouse cover for mine, you should think about it.) you reduce your production. Here are some tips that work / help out when navigating around your documents. Memorize them and you will be a word rock star: (or any program for that matter!)
Ctrl + Z key is the undo key – you can use it to undo all of the following tips:
Delete key – deletes to the right of the curser
Backspace key – deletes behind or to the left of the curser
Ctrl + right arrow – takes you back an entire word
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