When this medical office from San Diego came to us for IT Support they were in dire straights. A server upgrade gone wrong had them persisting on a file server with 100% drive utilization. They had to delete old data every day to make room for new files. We started off by upgrading them to a new server with plenty of space and moving the old data over. As part of the on boarding process we did a full audit of their IT infrastructure. We found a few issues that were going to hurt or were stopping business operations from being smooth. We found a backup system was inadequate with stale data that wouldn’t prevent data loss in a disaster scenario. Their Server room was running hot. With all of the equipment installed current ventilation was not keeping up with the heat load. The medical office had ageing hardware that was throwing system errors. Some of the ageing hardware was running Windows 7 an out of date operating system. All of these problems we were able to correct. The Medical office found they could be much more productive with out these problems hampering their work.
Hardware Refresh for better San Diego IT Support
Sometimes it feels like computer can last for ever. I have worked on a Windows 95 machine still running Toro Sprinkler system in 2017. However, computers do have an life expectancy. As you reach or drive past the expect life of the computer, the hardware will slow down and become less stable. Hard Drives are one of the last moving parts in a computer. When the hard drive reads or writes data it needs to spin up. Over time the bearings can wear out or parts can break down because of heat. Typically a hard drive lasts no more than five years. Computers with old hard drives can be a pain to use as the slow drive disrupts productivity.
This was huge issue here as a subset of computers did have failing or slowing hard drives. We were able to replace the aging hardware with new Dell AIO that came equiped with newer Solid State Drives. Solid state drives don’t have moving parts and are much faster than hard drives. All of the users were well impressed with the speed of the machines. The business was able to replace hardware and prevent computers from failing and causing a stoppage of business.We were able to use the large buy order from Dell to pressure dell to offer great terms. 5 year Same Business Day repair warranty. Also was able to get a discount price of Office 2020 Home and Business.
In a server room, hot exhaust from server and networking hardware can quickly overpower ventilation designed to cool the room. This Medical Office had a vent from the HVAC system in the room but was sustaining temperatures above 80 degrees. Heat is the enemy to computer hardware. Heat causes the system to break down prematurely. Having a cool server room is paramount to longevity and stability of your technology. We were able to install a specialized server room air conditioner. We didn’t need to plumb any condensate lines or HVAC vents. The maintenance free devices was able to cool the room down below 75 degrees.
San Diego Medical Offices Need Multi-Layer Security Strategy
A castle has multiple layers of defenses to block would be attackers from penetrating the security of the Castle and to protect the inhabitants. That is exactly the model any San Diego Business should follow when designing their business network. At the San Diego Medical office we installed centrally monitored end point protection. By monitoring the anti-virus remotely we can stop attacks in their tracks; stop them from spreading to the wider network. We installed a Next-Generation firewall that has deep packet inspection, honey pots, and behavior analysis with centerally monitored alerts. Then we installed a email security & encryption layer. This detects and encrypts private patient data in emails on the fly, a requirement to meet HIPAA standards.
Learn more about Multi-Layer Security
3-2-1 Backup Strategy
When the San Diego Medical Office first contacted us for IT Support they did have a backup system. It was series of external hard drives that server would dump their date to nightly. No one was managing or maintaining the back up system and it was months out of date. This is a bad scenario to be in because they thought they had current backup but would only learn the data is incomplete far to late.
Data is the life blood of your business. All of your most important documents, reports, policies, accounting information exists as data. If you were to loose this data it can be expensive to impossible to replace. By following a 3-2-1 backup strategy you can safe guard your data from corruption, deletion, and external threats like ransomware. You should have three copies of your data with one copy stored offsite. Then we monitor your backups for you and ensure that your data is properly backup up.