How to Maintain your small business servers in Kenya

In today’s world, businesses rely on servers to ensure data integrity. The need to maintain your small business servers is a must do for small business in Kenya.

Client server architecture, is one of the most used design to set up servers in most business. in this set-up, the server acts as the central source of data and information, and all other workstations are connected to the server and source most of their information from the server.

The main benefit of this set-up is that having a centralized source of information makes it easier to manage other workstation availlable in the network within the organization. This servers can have greater processing powers, Gigs of RAM, and storage capacity to manage the network activities.

A well design server installation and maintenance set up can improve the overall performance of the server and reduce failures and downtime.

We’re going to review the major ways to maintain you server such as;

update the OS
clean the server
hardware errors
system security
user accounts management
server utilization
verify working backups
Storage usage management
Update applications and software’s
RAID Tolerance

TYPES OF SERVERS

we’ll only highlight 3 servers types but there more;

Web Servers

Manage web files for internet services. mostly used by web hosting companies. For large organizations that experience greater traffic, they usually host their own web servers which is dedicated to them alone. Most small business rent or buy hosting space from hosting companies

Domain Controller

once of the most important servers roles, with domain controller, a user is granted access to various files and folders within the network via use of username and password combination. it’s a great way to ensure access control within the organization files

File Server

provides a centralized location of files that can be accessed by client computers or workstations within the network

How to Maintain your small business server in Kenya

The thought of how to maintain your small business server in Kenya, may intimidate some people. it should me a difficult task as it’s just like maintaining the normal PC.

Below is the list of the factors to look out for when doing server maintenance for your small business in Kenya

1. Operating System Updates

always make sure to auto-update your server OS updates once released by the OS. windows releases it’s updates nearly every week and so do linux based OS.

You can automate this process to make it more easier and efficient on you end

2. clean the server

Since servers handle more task and usually isolated, use compressed air to blow out dust and debris that may be inside the server. do not touch other components if you don’t have the expertise skill-set to play around with the server PC

3. Log for Hardware Errors

regularly reviewing your server logs to view errors such as overheating, disk failures, and also network challenges make a good indicator of problems that may occur if not handle sooner.

4. System Security

Always Evaluation and Re-evaluate your server security policies to make sure that they’re working well. also consider using network security tools to help your check out the entire functioning of you security set-up

5. User Account Management

Always make sure to change passwords periodically for your users. We recommend at least users must be prompted to change their passwords after every 3 months. Make sure to remove any user account shared to contractors or users that are no longer part of the organization.

6. Server utilization and resources

consider the resource of your server how they’re being put to use. if your server Processors and Memories or Disk are nearing 100% usage, it only means the server is being over burden and you should consider reduce the task or upgrading the resources

7. Verify working back ups

Always plan to have a few days or time of the week to check the server back up and test them regularly to ensure their viability. You can have them restored in a virtual machine weekly just to be sure that the back-ups are working fine.

8. Storage usage management

don’t just stock loads of non-useful files on your server. make sure to delete old emails and files that are no longer in use. you can archive your old files to an external storage if they’re that important to the organization. Make sure to ensure optimal performance of the disk, since server generate so much logs of the disk. a filled up disk may lead to server crash and possible loss of data

9. Update your software applications

After updating your OS, always make sure to also update your internal software application to reflect the latest security update. Running up to date software application within the server reduce by a great percentage the risk of breach of security within the server

10. RAID Management

Most servers use the RAID Technology(Redundant Array of Independent Disks). This basically means a group of hard disk mounted together to act as one source of storage and will automatically pick up when a single disk fails.

Your RAID Monitoring tool can alert you of your disk failures and ensure timely rescue of the situation.

To conclude, with the above checklist, you can be sure of what to look out for in order to maintain server in kenya, and how to go about it. always ensure that you work on an issue as soon as you’ve noticed it on your server to reduce unforeseen crash.

check: Server installation and maintenance services in Kenya

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