Welcome to the April Edition of "that's Correct!"

• We continue our series on Virtualisation. Last month we looked at the benefits – but what about the risks? What needs to be considered and what are common concerns?
• Our SharePoint Series also continues and we take a peek at a great way to make sure all the important procedures and policies that affect the day-to-day running of your business are no longer left undocumented.
  
• If you are a regular user of our Support Portal, you’ll have noticed some changes. Don’t know about our Support Portal? It could really change the way you lodge and monitor your requests for assistance! Read on to find out more...
• Plus - don't miss our special offer, your chance to save a packet on your next Desktop PC purchase!

In previous issues we’ve explained what Virtualisation is and the benefits of it to a business. In this issue we will look at the risks of virtualisation so that we have a complete picture of the potential scenarios. With each of these risks, we’ve put a counter argument to show how we can mitigate the risk.

Risk #1 – All the eggs in one basket

If we have all of our eggs (virtual servers) in one basket (physical server) and the basket breaks, then what do we do? Basically we design the basket so it’s one very solid basket. When we are designing a virtualised environment care must be taken to ensure that the physical server is designed to have multiple options for redundancy.

Things such as additional power supplies, hard drives, RAM and CPU’s are designed to provide for redundancy in the first instance should something go wrong. Following on quickly behind this we ensure that we have fast warranty response to make sure any failed part is replaced as quickly as possible.

Risk #2 – Increased complexity

"If I have a virtualised environment, isn’t it more complex than individual servers?" Technically, yes and no – to the uninitiated, it is more complex than having individual servers and care must be taken when performing things such as patching of the systems. However, there is a centralised management console for all the virtualised servers, which allows us to individually manage each of the servers.

At Correct Solutions, our team has been trained on how to use this technology and can easily assist remotely if required. Aside from this, the virtualised environment is actually simpler than having lots of individual servers.

Risk #3 – Under-configured systems

Having a virtualised environment means having a number of your systems dependant on a key set of physical hardware. If the technical specifications or configuration of the system is not designed correctly to support a virtualised environment then it may become unstable, or worse still corrupt the operating system and your valuable data. Having the correct design and plan for a virtualised environment to start with is the sure way to prevent this type of problem.

Our team at Correct Solutions has been utilising Virtualisation technologies now for close to 6 years, with many of our own internal systems being run in production for over 3 years. It is only in the last 18 months have we sought to encourage the use of Virtualisation with our clients as it is now becoming mainstream and therefore more widely understood and accepted.

If you want to know more about how we can implement virtualisation for you, now is the time to call us on 1300 COR SOL.

Think about the way you run your business. How many of your important procedures and policies remain undocumented? Now think of all the functions that your employees perform automatically. Imagine the hassle of retraining someone to fill these roles!

If you take a step back and think about the big picture, a great deal of the value of your business is locked up inside the brains of your employees. Each night when they go home the value of your business drops until they return in the morning, because without them you no longer have access to that information.

You can probably now begin to appreciate how important it is to capture all this undocumented information that your business relies so heavily on. One simple solution is to create a wiki or knowledge base into which all employees post and update all sorts of information about your business – from how to fill out a leave request form, whom to call in case of emergency or even how to order office supplies. Once it is documented, then not only is it there for future reference but if it is in electronic form then it can be easily backed up and more importantly, searched.

Wikis are one of the most important features of Windows SharePoint. In fact SharePoint is a great location for not only documents, but also for all the ad hoc information you find strewn around employees desks.

You should be asking yourself why that information is not already in the IT system you have. Implementing SharePoint will a go a long way to not only reducing office clutter but also making sure the information is documented, backed up and most importantly, available to all employees now and in the future.

Considering setting up a SharePoint site but not sure where to start? Contact us to discuss making SharePoint work for you...

If you are a regular user of our Support Portal, you’ll have noticed some changes recently. These are due to an update of our Practice Management System, ConnectWise. If you read that first line and thought to yourself…"What the heck is the Support Portal??”, then read on.

As we’ve talked about in past editions of that’s Correct, ConnectWise manages the procedures and scheduling of all of our client’s service tickets. The Correct Solutions Support Portal is our client’s window into that world. It allows you to log in, create support requests, view and update the status of existing support requests, attach screenshots and even download PDF copies of invoices. Administrators can add new users and set access levels for other members.

Essentially it provides you with a whole new level of visibility over what’s going on at our end. It can also be used to easily and effectively provide us with the information we need to prioritise and troubleshoot the issue you are having.

When you lodge a support request via the Portal, try to answer as many of these questions as possible:

• Detailed description of the problem - what is happening?
• Is this problem affecting only you, a few people or everyone?
• Does this stop you from doing your job?
• What were you doing when the problem came up?
• What other programs were open?
• When was your computer last shutdown/restarted?
• Does the problem reoccur? Can you replicate the problem?
• Is the issues stoping the company from functioning - is this a systems down?
• If it’s a printing issue, can you print to another printer?

There is an Emergency box which escalates your issue and helps us solve critical issues promptly.
Emergency / Urgent conditions would be:

• Server down
• Main accounting computer down and payroll can’t be sent
• Any other critical issue effecting your business operations

Of course, having the answers to these questions at hand if you ring the Help Desk is also very helpful and assists us in assisting you faster.

If you haven’t used the Support Portal and would like to know more, visit our Website for a comprehensive user guide, or email support@correct.com.au to request a username and password.