Servers are powerful equipment as they are designed to work 24/7 consistently and handle a high volume of information processing. However, their efficiency can be reduced drastically if you don’t know how to maintain them the best way. When you don’t have the right professionals to maintain your Houston servers and provide support, IT services in Houston are the best solution to keep your server up and running all the time.
If you are curious to know what measures you can take to maintain the servers in your company, here are some tips that might help you take care of your servers.
- Maintain server backups
The first and foremost thing is to ensure that your server backups are in good working order. Servers can be backed up in various ways.
For instance, you can create local backups, such as internal or external hard drives, magnetic tape drives, etc. or you can create remote backups. Each approach has its pros and cons.
However, having remote backups is considered a higher secure option as it protects the backups from even natural disasters. Before making any changes, it is a good idea to check that the backups are working. To be sure, you can also run test recoveries.
- Monitor the usage of disk
When you use too much space on your disks, it can ultimately affect the performance of your servers and can also prevent critical backups from running.
So, it is crucial to keep an eye on disk usage and follow a proactive approach to free up disk space so that your disk doesn’t run out of memory. For that, you can delete old mails, logs, and unused software versions.
If you have 90% disk usage, you must either reduce the usage or get additional storage because 100% usage will cause it to stop responding.
- Update the OS regularly
Windows, as well as Linux systems frequently release updates and keeping up with them can be a challenge. Thus, you can use patch management tools that can monitor updates and alerts you about new updates whenever available.
If you stick to update your server OS manually, you can miss many vital updates. In case automatic updates are not possible, you can create scheduled updates. Failing to keep the OS updated can expose you to hackers, malware, and other disasters.
- Check for errors in the hardware
Regularly review the logs to detect hardware problems, such as network failures, disk read errors, and overheating. All these issues are early signs of possible hardware failure.
- Change Password Timely
Though it may seem like a small thing, changing the password twice a year is crucial. It is important especially if passwords were given previously for maintenance purposes. Make sure that passwords are long and complex and should have a combination of letters, numbers, and special characters, if possible.
- Test UPS Batteries
Though UPS devices have improved a lot, they still lose their capacity with time. So, test their capacity at least annually to see how long they can sustain your server. It will help you determine the most suitable time to replace them.
Server maintenance is a lot more than the tips we have shared above. For instance, it also includes checking security, updating the control panel, monitoring RAID alarms, utilization checkups, etc. If you often face server-related issues, get expert assistance for server maintenance by hiring IT services in Houston now.