Capacity Planning: Balancing IT Resources for Efficiency 

capacity planning, Data Storage, IT Efficiency, IT optimization, Network, Ophtek, Servers, system upgrades, , , , , , ,
16
Jan 2024

The everchanging world of IT and business means that optimizing your resources has never been more important. But how do you do this effectively? 

Resource management is vital for maintaining IT operations, one small mistake and you could find your IT systems completely derailed. This means a drop in productivity, one which your competitors will be able to seize upon. But this doesn’t have to happen. Instead, you can prepare for all your potential needs and scenarios. This will ensure your organization can balance its resources and maintain a productive IT infrastructure. 

What is Capacity Planning? 

Naturally, you want your IT systems to be able to handle your existing workload, but it’s crucial they’re also optimized to deal with future demand. Accordingly, you need to be able to evaluate your current IT resources and confirm they’re suitable for your existing needs. After this, you need to forecast what your future needs are likely to be, and this can be achieved by identifying market trends or preparing for changes in demand e.g. winning new contracts. And this is exactly what capacity planning is. 

Which Resources Should You Be Looking At? 

The number of different IT resources in use at any one business are wide and varied. Nonetheless, when you’re working on a capacity planning strategy, it makes sense to concentrate on these areas first: 

  • Networks: with remote working becoming more popular, it’s important for your IT networks to be able to deal with multiple remote connections. After the lessons learned during the pandemic, where the technical demands of remote working were suddenly laid bare, organizations need to be ready. As a result, upgrading network infrastructures to deliver seamless connectivity to remote workers is paramount. 

Final Thoughts 

As the business landscape moves further into the 2020s, mastering capacity planning with IT resources should represent an essential target for all businesses. If you want your organization to achieve optimal performance and navigate the challenges of IT successfully, your capacity planning needs to start today. 

For more ways to secure and optimize your business technology, contact your local IT professionals. 

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How Do You Secure a Server Room?

lock server room door, multi factor authentication, Ophtek, secure racks and cages, secure server room, server room video surveillance, Servers, , , , , ,
12
Oct 2021

The backbone of any IT infrastructure is always the server room. It’s here that your most crucial IT tasks will be processed. And it needs to be secure.

A server room is a dedicated area within an organization which is used to house networking devices and storage servers. These are used to provide your business with the fundamentals of a fully functioning IT structure in the 21st century. But, as with all elements of IT, security is paramount. The data storage, alone, represents a rich source of intrigue to outside parties. And the networking solutions contained within a server room offer a shortcut deep into an organization. The potential damage from a server room breach, therefore, is huge.

Securing Your Server Room

It’s important that you secure your server room to protect both yourself and your customers. Thankfully, it’s straightforward once you understand the basics of server room security. Make sure you carry out the following:

  • Secure Racks and Cages: The best way to organize your storage and networking servers is by using racks and cages. These structures will allow you to neatly store your devices and locate them quickly for maintenance. But these racks and cages need to be secure. Aside from the confidential data stored on these devices, the equipment typically housed in racks and cages is expensive. Accordingly, you will need to secure these housings to minimize the risk of your server equipment leaving the premises.
  • Multi-factor Authentication: One of the strongest security measures you can implement involves multi-factor authentication. The need for a key, for example, is a fantastic way to provide security. But what if you doubled this up with the need for a credential card or even a biometric input? This strategy minimizes the problems that can arise when a key is lost or stolen. Naturally, it may seem time consuming and expensive, but the enhanced security provided by multi-factor authentication is more than worth it.

For more ways to secure and optimize your business technology, contact your local IT professionals.

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Choosing the Best Server for your Business

PC Server, Rack Mount, Servers, Tower, Windows Server, , ,
04
Apr 2018

If you want your business to be successful and allow your team to collaborate with ease then you need a great PC server, but how do you know which is right?

You’re almost certainly aware that a server is an essential business purchase in the digital age, but do you know what a server actually does? Usually the preserve of IT professionals, servers are dedicated computers that allow you to run hardware, share resources and connect people within your organization. So, as you can tell, they’re crucial for your business to operate and boost your staff’s productivity.

Choosing the best server for your business, however, is a little more complicated due to the vast range of servers available. Naturally, this choice ensures there’s a server for every organization’s needs, but the technical specs and jargon can seem a little bewildering. Thankfully, I’m going to break this jargon down into something more digestible to help you make the right choice.

What Types of Servers are Available?

There are two types of servers most commonly seen in businesses:

  • Rack Mounted Servers: Installed within a framework known as a rack, a rack server is a computer dedicated for use as a server. Due to the racking system in place, rack servers can save you valuable space by stacking one server above the other. Rack servers also bring much more simplicity when it comes to connecting cables between individual components.
  • Tower Servers: Housed within a single, upright cabinet, a tower server contains a computer which is intended to be used as a server. These types of servers allow easier cooling of individual components and offer a scalability which allows you to constantly add new servers to your network.

 Which Operating System is Best? 

When it comes to servers, the very best option you can choose to power them is Windows Server. It may feel as though Windows Server is ubiquitous in modern computing and among your rivals, but this is for one simple reason: it’s incredibly effective.

In use, in its earliest incarnation, since 2003, Windows Server is the industry standard, so there’s not only a vast range of options contained within its shell, but there’s also an amazing amount of support available to tackle virtually any issue. There are, of course, alternative options (mostly open source software), but the support for these systems is less prevalent.

How Do You Determine Storage and Memory?

One of the most important needs of a good server is adequate storage and memory. Therefore, calculating the needs of your organization’s computer activity is crucial. Every organization is different, so you will need to analyze your digital operations closely. For example, if you run a client database which requires 1TB storage and 4GB memory then your server needs to have at least that amount of storage and memory. Chances are that your storage and memory needs will increase over time, so it’s recommended that you overbuy in terms of storage and memory to accommodate any future demands.

These are the very basics of servers, but if you can get them right then you’re laying down a fantastic foundation to help power your organization’s networks.

For more ways to secure and optimize your business technology, contact your local IT professionals.

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What is RAID and Should Your Business be Using it?

hardware, Office IT,
02
Apr 2015

What_Is_RAID

Find out what RAID is and whether your critical business systems need it. Learn all the basics to ensure your data stays secured regardless of your set-up.

RAID is short for “Redundant Array of Independent Disks”. The “I” in RAID can also be referred to as “Inexpensive”, which can also be true.

RAID stores your data across multiple hard disks for the benefit of:

Providing faster volume– Quicker to access data

Facilitates redundancy– Allowing seamless data access when a given number of disks fail.

In other words it helps prevent data loss when a hard drive fails by allowing the other hard drives to pick up the slack

One thing to bear in mind is that RAID data redundancy configurations are not immune to malware attacks, natural disasters and data beaches. As mentioned before, what it’s good for is preventing against hardware failure and maintaining uptime.

Popular RAID levels

Different_RAID_Configurations

RAID levels refer to how hard disks are configured to work alongside each other. There are three common RAID configurations that you’ll mostly hear about:

  • RAID 0- offers the benefit of fast access to read and write data by having it distributed across the disks. The main disadvantage is that it offers no protection when a drive in this arrangement fails, as it’ll be the missing piece that jeopardises this arrangement leading to unreadable data.
  • RAID 1– Mirrors the data in drives paired together. This offers better failover protections. In the case of one drive failing the data would still be available on the other disk whilst the failed drive is replaced. It also comes with the disadvantage of using up half of the disk space that is used to hold the mirrored data from the other disk. This means it’s a more costly solution.
  • RAID 5– provides the best of both worlds, with data redundancy and faster access to it. It distributes data across all disks like with a RAID 0 setup and covers data with parity. In the case of failover, it’ll recover data like it does with RAID1. You’ll need to consider the minimum number of disks required for this setup, which is three, and uses one third of the disk capacity to hold the disk parity information.
  • JBOD– Stands for “just a bunch of disks”. It’s not really considered to be a RAID however it is available alongside other RAIDs as a choice on most varieties of storage boxes. This only bunches a group of disks into one volume, where data will be filled until it becomes full and then moves onto the next available disk. With this, there’s isn’t any benefit of faster data access and redundancy. This is only good to use as a last resort.

What is RAID suitable for?

RAID is not really suitable for standard desktop computers, unless there’s a reason to store hundreds of gigabytes worth of critical data. Instead, it’s better suited on all servers and NAS (network attached storage) devices that share content and resources or that hold large amounts of data.

NAS devices simply act as additional storage that can be plugged into a network.

Since managing storage volumes on servers and NAS devices can seem like a headache to maintain, we suggest using an automated RAID management system such as SHR.

SHR by Synology, stands for Synology Hybrid RAID. It’s not even essential to know about all types of RAID setups as SHR takes care to quickly configure storage volume and deploy it according to your requirements.  Unlike the classic RAID setups, SHR allows anyone to maximize their disk usage. There’s a lot more flexibility too, where you can scale up with additional disks within an already configured volume.

For more ways to secure your data and systems, contact your local IT professionals.

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